summer heat
my parents worry
about polio

One of Daddy’s legs was shorter than the other, but I never imagined how this affected him growing up. I was a teenager when he revealed his hardships: “The other boys bullied me because they knew I couldn’t catch them, but I hid in the bushes or around a corner, caught them by surprise, then beat ’em up. During the Depression, I searched for a job. The bosses would look me up and down, and say, ‘No, we can’t use you,’ even though I could outwork most men. The government saved me with a scholarship to barber school.”

Daddy cut hair, banked his money, and bought land on the Texas Coast. During my early childhood, I barely knew him as he left at sunrise and came home after dark.

handmade boots
he orders ostrich skin
in two different sizes

Lynn Edge

lives in South Texas. She has written haibun since 2004 and has numerous works published in Frogpond, Haibun Today, Contemporary Haibun Online, and other online and print journals. She has written a collection of haibun entitled Unsaddled.

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Year of the Farrier, haibun story by Lynn Edge in Issue 20 of MacQueen’s Quinterly (September 2023); nominated for the Red Moon Anthologies 2023, and selected for inclusion in Contemporary Haibun 19 (Red Moon Press, 2024)