The Photo I Didn’t Take

It’s misting heavily, and two city workers, street sweepers, are smoking beneath a ledge. Above them, pigeons huddle and sink their heads into their bodies.

lunch hour
the snap-pop of umbrellas
unfurling

Published by

Bob Lucky

Bob Lucky is the author of Careful Not to Startle the Yaks (Cyberwit, 2025) My Wife & Other Adventures (Red Moon Press, 2024), My Theology: 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 2018, and Ethiopian Time (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014). He lives in Portugal.

5 thoughts on “”

  3. So beautifully atmospheric and succinct! I am so glad the street sweepers were able to enjoy their smoke undisturbed

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  5. Looks like Bob Lucky was once a photographer for NewsDay. This would be such a great exercise for all photographers! “Go out without a camera. Find a shot you could have worked with, but then use your words to describe how it would have landed if you hadn’t missed it. If Haiku would help, use haiku.”

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