Sean O’Connor

Daily Bread

While her husband is out searching the town for their daughter, Mary Dwyer makes a cake of bread in the Aga. She doesn’t need it, she’s already made their daily bread that morning, as usual, but she’s fretting that something terrible has happened to Millie who hasn’t come home all day.

She taps the base of the bread with her fingertips and the slightly hollow sound says it is ready, just right, so she wraps it in a damp tea-towel and rests it on the range.

She thinks about kneeling at the low window under the stairs and saying a prayer to Saint Anthony, but goes up the twisty stairs to Millie’s room instead. She hopes Millie will be on her bed waking to the smell from the kitchen below, but the bed is untouched since morning. Mary goes to Millie’s window and looks out over the hens’ garden to the low field beyond.

slow sundown
their blackness blending
a horse and her foal

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Note: Read also “Secrets,” a companion piece to “Daily Bread.”

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About the Author

Sean O’Connor is the founder and editor of The Haibun Journal, a judge of the Genjuan International Haibun Contest, and has been writing haibun and haiku for 30 years. His first solo collection, Let Silence Speak (Alba Publishing, 2016), was shortlisted for the Touchstone Distinguished Books Award 2016. His latest book, Even the Mountains: Five Years in a Japanese Village (Alba Publishing, 2018), has been well received by reviewers. He currently lives in rural Ireland.