Cherie Hunter Day

Winter Bones

Bar Island is just a slip of land greening above the tides. A snag of rock covered in coarse sedges, not even enough of a foothold for bayberry. Only the lowest tide grants access—the slippery trudge across the mudflat with silt sucking at my boots. On one visit I found a cache of market-sized halibut or hake reduced to off-white architecture above the wrack. I collected enough bones and driftwood to make two mobiles. Using clear nylon monofilament, I strung them together out of context, out of order, but available to the slightest breeze. 

moonlight break the glass for a clean getaway

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About the Author

Cherie Hunter Day has written and published haibun since 2000. Her haibun “In Rumble Dark” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. Recent collections include Miles Deep in a Drum Solo (Backbone Press, 2022), which won the 2021 Backbone Press Haiku Book Contest, and an e-chapbook of tanka, A Color for Leaving (Snapshot Press, 2017). She lives in northern California among some thirsty redwoods.