Bob Lucky

One Summer

Drenched in sweat, we walk along roads collecting empty coke and beer bottles in crumpled paper grocery bags, not out of any sense of civic duty or community pride but out of sweet-tooth induced hunger, a craving. The pennies add up until there are enough to buy a plastic carton of Cool Whip. And just outside the door of the grocery, where we can catch the air-conditioned draft each time a shopper comes or goes, we share a spoon and empty that tub, standing up.

my brother’s headstone
slipping into the coolness
of an oak’s shade

Note: The haibun first appeared in Frogpond 33.3, Fall 2010.