Devil’s Playmate

I am the devil’s playmate.

He’s always there for me.

He perches on my shoulder

and talks, convincingly.

We while away the hours

just goofing off, we two.

He makes me think I’m working;

brags on all I do.

When I put off the ironing

until another day;

or when I start to whine,

he tells me “It’s okay.

If I forget my prayers;

to seek God’s guiding hand,

he tells me not to worry;

God always understands.”

I am the devil’s playmate

and sorrowed, though I be,

I cannot seem to chase him off.

He likes hanging out with me.

So, if he knocks at your house,

“Don’t open!”, I implore,

like that old snake-oil salesman,

you can’t get him out the door.

-Joy S. Barefoot

The Colors of Hope

“God, help me to look for answers

and work at discerning Your call.

Help me to grasp, as Joseph did,

when feeling abandoned by all.”

As I prayed again for vision

for clarity to understand

I looked up to see a rainbow,

full palette, stretched out, in a band

of brightly arrayed perfection,

a ribbon rolled out, edge to edge

and in those colors, a promise

God’s signature signed with His pledge

that He is eternally with me

each step of this long weary way.

but there is one thing He asked of me;

that I must remember to pray.

-Joy S. Barefoot

God’s Fistful of Pennies

 
A fistful of pennies . . .

laid in my palm;

warm, moist pennies,

pennies

smelling of metal,

and ,shyly, passed

into my palm

from the tiny

warm, moist fist

of the little girl

in the pink flowered dress

sitting next to me.

What will God do

with her fistful of pennies?

-Joy S. Barefoot

The Turned Down Page

A page, turned down,
at “Intolerance and Forbearance” . . .

was it a struggle to the finish,

a challenge, abandoned?

Was the knowledge intolerable?

The book appears half finished;

it says the base of intolerance

is “stupefying ignorance”.*

It says one who does not know an insult

when he hears one

is an example of this.

Sometimes I think I’m hit

with stupefying ignorance

when

someone tells me

a thing I had no need to know

in some lewd, seductive and salacious way.

It’s clearly

a thing I should not tolerate!

I think about it . . .

with forbearance

but

that page is creased forever.

-Joy S. Barefoot

Tilling the Heart

You have tilled my heart this day, oh, Lord;

scratching out the corners, left to thrive

and nourish those most loved by you

the tender and fragile; hanging onto life.

My heart’s been tilled this day, oh, Lord

its soul has been watered with burning tears

for those most bent, down-trodden souls

who hold onto hope for Jubilee’s year.

Plant, in these tilled and turned-up places

seeds to sprout up, bold and strong,

thriving in the warm sun of my heart;

waiting for the harvester’s threshing throng.

Fill my soul with clean, flowing water

feeding the broken soil of my heart,

nourishing and fattening the seeds of summer.

The least I can give, is my tilled-up heart.

-Joy S. Barefoot

Preacher Man

Oh, Preacher Man,

sweeping across the dais

with your billowing black robe.

You tell me of a hell

awaiting me

for lack of response

to “Just As I Am”.

My God,

who made me

“just as I am”,

he, who thought me

and I was;

he, who loved me

from my Mother’s womb;

he, who loved you; made you

just as you are,

did he say this?

How did you become

my pathway to salvation,

you, who were thought to be and was,

just like me?

Oh, Preacher Man, tell me, how?

-Joy S. Barefoot

In God’s Eyes (Balcony View)

It’s 11:55

on Sunday morning.

Where is your child?

Offering is piled

into the brass plates,

freshly polished;

now gleaming in the morning sun.

The last hymn is beginning

as a rustle of gathering

ripples through the sanctuary.

Ladies collect their purses,

some folks pick up bulletins

while others gather

children’s drawings,

or graffiti.

Oh, yes,

your child

is on the back row

doing the Macarena,

with a little extra jive,

to the strains of

“Praise My Soul,

the King of Heaven”!

-Joy S. Barefoot

(View from the balcony, Bedford Presbyterian Church

at the time of the popular "Macarena" dance )