Reckoning Time is a musical meditation on the final moments of Walt Whitman's life. As the dying poet lies struggling for breath, he encounters his beloved Peter Doyle and must choose between three ships that represent different aspects of his existence.

The first ship, "Paumonok," carries his childhood and early life - his parents, his youth in Brooklyn, his early struggles as a journalist and his awakening to both his sexuality and his poetic calling. Through memories of family conflict and his journey to New Orleans, we see the formation of the man who would dare to "sing America."

The second vessel is the Brooklyn Ferry, representing his literary legacy and Leaves of Grass. Here Whitman revisits his revolutionary poetry - his celebration of the body, democracy, and spiritual connection - while confronting the scandal it caused and his transformation into "The Good Gray Poet," a sanitized public figure he barely recognizes.

The third ship emerges from his work as a Civil War nurse, where he comforted dying soldiers and witnessed America's greatest trauma. This vessel embodies his role as national healer and the mythic status that both elevated and imprisoned him.

As Whitman agonizes over choosing just one ship - one version of himself - a fourth, unexpected vessel appears: a schooner carrying the voices of future American poets he inspired, from William Carlos Williams to Maya Angelou. In this final vision, he discovers that his true immortality lies not in any single identity, but in the continuing song of American poetry he helped birth.

The piece explores the tension between authentic selfhood and public persona, the price of literary immortality, and the ultimate question of whether a life dedicated to art can achieve the spiritual unity Whitman so desperately sought.