Old man

He stood, a wizened, age-old defiance in the face of the elements that threatened to tear him down. A short, fragile body, he was hardly much more than a skeleton stitched together with strips of lean, sinewy muscles under a weather-tanned, leathery skin. He held himself up with a tall branch, steadying himself in the undulating sand. The water swelled and crashed around him, trying to swallow him whole. But he stared steely ahead, only his cottony tuft of a white beard fluttering in the ocean breeze. He was naked, except for a bloated, stained, old cloth wrapping that diapered around his waist. Sometimes, he struggled, bracing himself with both hands on the wood, and catching his step before he could fall into the water and be swept away. For who, or what, he was provoking with the tenacious proof that this old man could still stand, I don't know. But I think he was winning.