Nurturing Nectar

There are times
when I walk
through the garden
lingering
just long enough,
to gather
a hint
of the sweetness,            
and that sweet
sweet
nectar
clings to me,
saturates me;
sinks deep down
into my soul,
nurturing what is beautiful
but drowning,
with it’s sweetness,
old
and wasteful things.
-Joy S. Barefoot

Hacking a Trail

The move had somehow
hacked a trail
back to my past;
and my ancestral longing
for a Papa, like Mary Ingram’s,
and a Mama who could
stay at home and cure all my ills.
The miserable, wet heat,
somehow,
fell like a reminder
of those early summer vacations
in rural Georgia;
going to the spring
and lugging the pail
up the hill
to Christine’s,
or Aunt Tish’s kitchen
with its bare essentials;
cooking up a scant meal,
the smell of which
was heady with fatback and beans
and cornbread for soakin’.
The crust was always
grainy, gritty and crisp.

The move had taken me somewhere
into a geography
of the mind,
all grainy and gritty
and troublesome.
Life was always hard
with someone’s lost dreams
hanging heavy over me.

-Joy S. Barefoot, Mississippi
(written after moving to Mississippi, 2001, feeling so much like Georgia)
 

Beneath the Deep

Thoughts

lie hidden

beneath the deep;

danger floating in murky water

cause me to steer clear

of that unknown icy cold beast,

dwelling, just out of reach,

below the surface, and beckoning me

with only a small tiny finger of itself

scratching at me, somewhere in my thoughts.

 -Joy S. Barefoot

 

(this poem is placed to resemble an iceberg)

String of a Dream

A string of a dream

came to me;

kept hanging there, elusively,

waiting for me to grasp it;

dangling, just beyond my reach.

 I eagerly snatched at it

and, slowly, I climbed up the string of it,

not knowing where it would take me,

but climbing, inch by discovered inch.

As I climbed further along

this string of a dream

bits and pieces were discovered.

The vision began to reveal itself;

a vision of the dream

at the end of the string.
 -Joy S. Barefoot

Old Hair

Old Hair

            Joy S. Barefoot   

 

My hair is thinner;

new tweaks and turns.

A cow’s sure been licking;

old directions, it spurns.

 

Some days it’s so flat;

like I’ve few hairs at all;

others, it fluffs

and is “Alfalfa”* tall.

 

I’ve not given up.

We wrestle each day.

One thing is for certain;

It has its own way.

 

(*Name of a young boy in Spanky’s gang whose unruly hair stood up on his crown)