He was never much fun at the beach. He hated sand, and told everyone as often as he could. The water was either too cold or too warm. And the sun was always too hot, too bright. He didn’t care for the smell of sunblock either. If there were jellyfish in the water, they would find him. If there was dead coral on the seabed, it would find its way into his aqua socks. He refused to get prescription goggles for snorkeling and then complained that all the fish were a blur. But his wife loved the beach, loved snorkeling, so he would accompany her and then find the nearest shade, where he would read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He lost count of how many times he read that book, how many interpretations he had made, but he had a good idea of what it was about and blamed his father and all those beach excursions that ended with sunburn and sandy hotdogs for his aversion to sun, sand, and fun.

summer break 
another sand castle 
washed out to sea 

Bob Lucky’s

latest book is a collection of tanka and tanka prose, Careful Not to Startle the Yaks (Cyberwit, 2025). He is also the author of My Wife & Other Adventures (Red Moon Press, 2024); My Thology: Not Always True But Always Truth (Cyberwit, 2019); Conversation Starters in a Language No One Speaks (SurVision Books, 2018), a winner of the James Tate Poetry Prize; and Ethiopian Time (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), an honorable mention in the Touchstone Distinguished Book Awards. He lives in Portugal.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Book Review: My Wife & Other Adventures by Rich Youmans in contemporary haibun online (20:3, December 2024)

⚡ Clare MacQueen’s enthusiastic endorsement of My Wife & Other Adventures: “a mondo memoir of tiny poetic narratives infused with [Lucky’s] signature wit, wordplay, and philosophical musings; a handbook of 63 haibun that takes us meandering on a taste tour through the Near and Far East, entertaining as it enlightens...”

⚡ Bob Lucky at Haikupedia.org (September 2024)

⚡ A Tribute and Commentary on Bob Lucky’s new collection, My Thology: Not Always True but Always Truth by Ray Rasmussen in cho (15:4, January 2020)