Rime of the Ancient Boat House

One hot summer’s day, I was chasing a sandpiper down the beach, dodging the beached man-o-wars that strategically positioned themselves to slow down my capture of the hyperactive waterfowl.  I ran for half a mile or more before the bird grew irritated with my persistent pursuit and flew away over the open ocean.  My eyes traced it as it fluttered angrily away, but I soon found myself fixated on a dilapidated building freestanding on rotten wooden columns in the middle of the sea.

It looked like a structure used by some ancient breed of fisherman, long before the boat had been perfected.  It was rickety and shoddily built, but stood three stories high, as if constructed to boldly fly in the face of the ocean’s random violence.  I pictured an old man, bent with age and like of vitamin C, sitting on the dock with his legs dangling off the ledge, a wooden fishing pole tethered to his calloused hands.  He would sit for hours and hours, never moving but lost deep in thoughts of the sea.

I wanted to go aboard the old home and find the evidence of this old man - a box of hooks, a tattered hat, a half-finished novel – but lost interest in it, as the winds of time had, when my sandpiper returned to the shores with a small fish in its beak.  It swallowed it in one gulp, and I began to chase it back down the beach, leaving the old home to its continued degradation until it was swallowed by the sea.