Bill at Baltimore's Inner Harbor

Walking beside the water on an Autumn Sunday

afternoon, a breeze tousling his silver hair,

Bill pauses as a bevy of joggers breaks

around him.  The sunshine is all pleasure,

like a kiss dissolving on his skin. The abiding

sound is the slop and smack of water against

the harbor wall.  The patient gulls waiting

nearby watch for signs of bread.  Loving

couples and touring families amble past.

He thinks of jumping in. A younger Bill,

very drunk, had once nearby at Fells Point

and then quickly clambered out, wet but

happy.  The many intervening years,

keeping some, discarding much, had

remade the city and Bill even more.

No sign or police required now to

keep him a dry and decorous senior.

He moves, and moving, feels somehow

that a skein of past acts and choices

support and shape the vivid present

as much as the tumult of each moment.