The horizon is a grey smear. The tide is out, but the waves continue to wash ashore. A tern dives and dives again but pulls up short before committing to some glint or movement below the surface. A woman pacing back and forth on the beach stops to examine something—a shell, perhaps, and throws it into the surf. The coolness in the breeze is a sign to go home, but I’ve become a part of the scene.

a cormorant’s outstretched wings
the faint outline
of a sail

Bob Lucky

is a regular contributor to haiku and tanka journals in the US, Europe, and Australia, and his work has been widely anthologized. His fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous international journals, including Flash, Rattle, Modern Haiku, KYSO Flash, The Prose-Poem Project, The Boston Literary Magazine, Haibun Today, and Contemporary Haibun Online.

He is the author most recently of the chapbook Conversation Starters in a Language No One Speaks (SurVision Books, 2018), and his chapbook of haibun, tanka prose, and prose poems, entitled Ethiopian Time (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), was an honorable mention in the Touchstone Book Awards. In February 2018, his haibun story Gratitude (nominated by KYSO Flash) was named Runner-Up for Vestal Review’s VERA Award.

Lucky lives and works in Saudi Arabia, and edits Contemporary Haibun Online.