Ransom

Ransom resented whenever the ocean encroached on the land, Because she could no longer visit certain areas upon her walks, Though she sometimes was heard to make small talk about its unseemly loveliness; The rhythmic murmuring, the predictability of the tides. It wasn't that she resented its presence nearby, but more That it was never content and it was never still; it never slept, And whenever her energy was low, its hyperactive antics seemed to her Even more frantic, as if to drain whatever energy and ambition she had left. But she grew fat and complacent with time, more content, and learned To be at peace, however might appear the selfish ways of the sea on any day. Though she no longer went on her lengthy walks, she could stand at the window For hours, staring toward the paths she used to know by heart. First, you came to the old half-gone hull from an extinct shipwreck, Which the older people used to tell the story of, but now most of them were passed on. Farther along was a hermit's ancient house, now decrepit, but always fresh fuel for the imagination. At every walk, the ocean had always seemed to be one step ahead, or just a few yards away, watching... One needed to know the tides and the currents to find things, to stay safe. Oh, and there were seashells always waiting for the finder; to burnish a homely present, Or make a new conversation piece. For all the ocean had stolen from her, it had given back commodity; Pieces of itself, as a sort of bounty, a dowry perhaps, for whatever it had not yet grown bold enough to take. Eventually her health declined, so she stopped getting out of bed for most things, Saying it was the same arthritis that had felled her mother and grandmother too early, And that the ocean's nearness had never helped, had in fact made things worse, That the continual wearing down by the tides seemed to have kept it stirred up and inflamed. She caught a summer cold and eventually died of it, and was buried before a week had passed, Inside a white picket-fence cemetery, very near to the seashore. Everyone said that she was bound to be pleased, even in death; So near to her favorite paths and her beloved cottage, that you could almost point to them. On a wild night of storms later that year, the sea rose slowly and stealthily, crept in And lashed her body, and then stole it away, leaving her small stone to mark a new vacancy.