Big or Small
by
Matt Zurbo

Sometimes I wonder…
am I big or small?

A large wave, I’m terrified!

Yet to a crab I’m very tall.

Indeed, in the ocean,
I can be both things at once –
(Kid snorkling.)

Speechless in a whale’s shadow,

a hunter about to pounce.
(Swimming over a crayfish.)

I tower over babies,
but the garbo kinda scares me.

In a crowd I’m swamped,

on my own I feel mighty.
(Stomping happily through long grass.)

In a breeze I roar!
(Arms wide, smiling, eyes closed, embracing the wind.)

Facing a storm I fall.
(Running in hard rain and lightening.)

Tell a joke I laugh I grow,
(Standing on school desk, acting out joke. Whole class laughing, except teacher.)

act the clown I shrink real low.
(Mimicking confused baby gorilla. Kid does not see mother gorilla behind, about to drop fist on his head.)

Then there’s my imagination,
flying clocks,
(reader looking up from ground, at kid looking up at sky full of clocks and watches with wings, all flying in same direction.)

dinosaurs,
(Kid riding a dinosaur’s back, smiling, as a pack of them stampede.)

weird things in the sink.
(Kid looking at kitchen sink, full of aline little creatures.)

Even something as simple as the way I stomp my feet.
(Kid stomping and twisting and roaring!)

All of these things make me ten feet tall.
(Standing like a giant over small suburb.)

But monsters under my bed?
I’m more scared than a mouse!

A moth and a spider
are about the same size.
With one I am fearless,
from the other I run and hide.

Really, it comes down to,
how I treat you and
you tread me,
(Kid sitting back turned to little girl, while he plays with his octopus toy, and toy pirates ship, and weird alien doll, etc…)

all of us any size
(Kid embracing same girl in a hug. Girl warmly smiling. Toys are now big and real things, surrounding them.)

that we chose to be.
(Kid, walking on planet, now the size of a ball, as if it was spinning just for them.)

The End