It’s More than the Step Streets

More than the foot I broke
outside Van Cortlandt Park.
And the friends

and family and
strangers who visited
me up there. To be at the end

of the line
at night and first
on the train the next

morning, to be safely wedged
northwest, to be rich
in two hours’ worth of rhythmic

thought each day is
to be more than the sum
of 160 steps up.

When Corlear Avenue Was Home

No recipes for Pinterest. No nails
for the resurrection
of Washington

Avenue. It’s really a boulevard
without the reach
of Broadway. I remember

the way I lived
in the Bronx. That elevated #1
line dropped shadows,

then hints, of the plains
I might choose to cross
before decades erased

my interest
in pins and collage.