At the Ohio River he finds himself meditating the difference between action and passion. A couple at the stern of a moored cabin cruiser near the bridge sit and talk in the sun. He disappears inside, she rises slowly and looks out at the river. He returns and she stands briefly with him, arm behind head, knee bent up like a heron.
He is taken by that continual, womanly grace, even at this distance. Is this passion in an otherwise dispassionate man?
Yesterday he thought of the books his father read—sci-fi and whathaveyou, wondering what he thought then, did they merely amuse or did he dream? He thinks of asking his father to take a trip with him, the two of them down to the Pennsylvania gap. Elegiac certainly, but it would be good to know him.
He thinks how quickly and completely he left that house; as much divorced by his own myth—not the prodigal but the wise son—as by his own majority.