Three Ways to Go...

He's new you know, a few days only. Still thinking, him!
Not sure of his own mind yet. He's hardly settled out - 
and you can tell. The neat and tidy gear, the short goat's 
growth upon his chin - and turning up each evening 
early for the soup - sometimes an hour or more 
before the kitchen's due. Dead give-away to us, that is!

He'll learn the knack, of course, how to appear
as if by magic from the gloom along with all of us
the very moment that the tureens start to steam.
Just doing what he's doing, looking in the water
hours on end... that aint no good for no one that!
I wonder what he sees in them there murky depths...

My guess is he sees the Monet paintings of the Thames.
He was an art buff not so long ago - well, so he says.
P'raps he sees the beauty of a mist, the glorious
lack  of detail that it gives. You don't want detail
when you're living on the streets! Lots of educated men 
out here. One called Opera reckons that if all the Bibles
in the world were lost tonight, that he could set-to
and redraft the whole of it from memory. Another was
the M.D. of a large firm making motor parts. Most all
have been here months - some years - no chance for them
to find the homeward road one day! Them's moulded to
the ways of our cold world... but him... just days. 
There's still a chance... if only he could snap out  
of his water  dreaming. Not healthy, that. He needs
to take advice from them as knows - and gawd,
there's plenty of them here to give it out! Once
the kitchen comes. that is! You has to listen to
their preaching... price you pays for having soup 
and bread. Some trot the book out, chapter, verse
and every word.But some talk sense. It's knowing which.

Two months ago he had it made. Semi- in the country,
lovely wife and two great kids. Big noise in the city.
Three cars in the garage - the other sort of murk, 
I shouldn't wonder! Stands out a mile he does, him
with all his mooning underneath that bridge. The worry
is he's thinking suicide. That's why this place became
so popular with us and all the likes of us. Trains and 
water, see? Two ways to go. The third one is to freeze,
but who wants that? Give me the water any day.
People think us walking miles and miles. We don't.
We're never far away. You just don't see us, that's the fact.

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Written for the image prompt at The Mag