School Yard Memories (Park Street School)

The following is a song I made up years ago and used an old Irish tune
"Murphy's Front Door", I believe.


Oh, the games that we played
in the days we were young
when we romped in the park at the school

We played Crack the Whip
as we ran down the hill
with the one on the end called the fool.

We danced Minuet
when May day came 'round.
We twined up the Maypole just right.

We gaily would sing
as we danced on the green.
What carefree and tender young sprites.

The half moon rock seat
near the crest of the hill
was a coveted, favorite place

where the swings 'cross the way,
as they creaked and they clanged,
brought dreamers and sky face to face.

The songs that we sang;
the games that we played;
in a child's world so long in the past

were the dreams of a child
building memories up
where the joy in the heart holds them fast.

-Joy S. Barefoot

Right Message Wrong Addressee

Sometimes my brain gets a little idea        

so I struggle and query its sources.

I dig a little here and dig a little there

but can't seem to come up with more.

 

Perhaps it floated from a foreign place

like a bottle with a message on the shore

maybe it was meant for somebody smarter

or maybe my neighbor next door.

 

It matters not how I go about it

nor how  I try to express it.

It comes right down to the same old thing

Right message, wrong addressee.

 

-Joy S. Barefoot

Ear of the Beholder

 

 

Let me listen to the sermon

with an open heart and mind

to gather tiny nuggets

of wisdom I may find.

 

In the preacher’s words and phrases,

it’s amazing what I hear

in sermons that are meant

for someone else’s ear!

-Joy S. Barefoot

Friday Nights in a Dry County

I remember Papa

when he called Smith’s Taxi Stand

“222, operator”

then a taxi, he’d demand.

 

Friday nights, I’d watch him.

He’d be dressed up, fit to kill.

He’d wink at the taxi driver,

saying, “Take me to Baptist Hill!”

 -Joy S. Barefoot

 

(This just happened to be what locals called the "Bootleg" area in the 1940s where I grew up)

The Chair's Dilemma

The chair got tired of being sat on

by fat and boney people.

He told the woodman building chairs,

“I’d rather be a steeple.”

 

The woodman observed the waiting chair

and said, “If I make you a steeple,

then you’ll be getting your bell rung

by fat and boney people!”

 -Joy S. Barefoot

It Isn’t Me

I am not the poem, can’t you see.
‘though I speak with “I”, it isn’t me.

My thoughts, my hand, in time and space
perhaps in some remembered place;

perhaps the “I” when I was five
or the “I” the day I came alive

or the weakened child with braided hair

who loved the grove and open air.

The world turns daily on its own

another “I” with every dawn.

Perhaps ‘twas I, the day I said it

but by tomorrow, I might regret it.

I know you think 'twas I who wrote it   
I understand, and that's well-noted,

but here I am and you can see
‘though I speak with I, it isn’t me.


-Joy S. Barefoot 

Reminiscing (Moments in Time)

If I had the gift of time
and could hold it in my hand
I'd stretch out the moments
of glorious bliss
rewinding, again and again.

I'd gather moments of pleasure;

each tiny remnant of joy;

I'd stop the hands

on these moments in time,

rewinding again and again.

 

But time is not meant to be captured.

I can't hold it in my hand;

can't capture a single past

moment of bliss;

can't live it over again.

 

So I will gather the treasures

as they're gifted along my way;

I will taste them, and try them

and relish their sweetness

to own them, again and again.

-Joy S. Barefoot 

 

 

Fear

No one ever told me

I couldn’t

but no one ever told me

I could

so

I didn’t.

I tried and tried

but I couldn’t.

-Joy S. Barefoot

Red Boots

Red Boots

     Joy S. Barefoot

I wanted red boots,
red rubber boots
like the other girls wore
when I was six, or seven;
wonderful boots,
smacking mud puddles,
boots with soft
fuzzy white linings
rolled over
and hugging pale
winter legs.

I wore black galoshes.

My chafed legs
and damp feet
resented
those red boots
the other girls wore
when I was six, or seven.

When I was older

I had red boots,
but it was not a time
for red boots.

The Shoe Psychiatrist of Taos (version one)

A tiny alcove

where eagles soar

across a blue sky.

 . . . Hand painted?

Smiling, and dismissing

our unspoken question,

“Wallpaper” he said.

“Got it from the internet.”

He moves nimbly about the space

as he sells shoes,

gives compliments

and flirts innocently.

At the counter

in the next room

his sandaled wife

nibbles her homemade soup

and reaps the rewards

from this kind

and generous man.

An old woman and her daughter

leave the eagle aerie,

wearing new sandals,

a brighter spring in their step

and feeling a spirit

to match that

of the soaring eagle.

-Joy S. Barefoot, 2007

Little Ostrich Skin Shoes

Little Ostrich Skin Shoes

                               -Joy S. Barefoot

 

I bought new shoes, fashioned of ostrich skin;

dyed the color of ground mustard seed;

pretty shoes, with tiny heels

looking sharp on my feet.

They matched some of the colors

in the print of swirling Viking ships

encircling and swishing

about my freshly shaven legs

Shoes, a perfect accent

for that expensive sundress from Jelleff's

at Seven Corners.

It took a lot of my teacher's check

to buy those shoes;

shoes that clicked off

down that hospital hall,

leading my Mama to see her Papa.

 

“You look like you own this place”,

Mama said to me

as I clicked

those snappy little ostrich skin shoes

down the hall

of the Floyd County, Georgia hospital.

Mama was proud of me.

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)

Point of View

I use to hang
from an apple tree
viewing the world,
upside down.

Now
I hang on
to an upside down world,
viewing
the old apple tree.

                     -Joy Stalvey Barefoot

The Old Road Home

The ragged road turned, like rickrack,
to the house, sadly falling away.
Gone, the spring house tucked into the hill;
the dam where the old pond laid.

Gone, is the field near the country store
where laughter rang at day's end
with no one heeding home calls
'til night rays began to descend.

Our secret garden is no longer there,
grown over with scrub pine trees;
just barren fields where treasures were found;
arrowheads and millstone pieces.

I wonder if Solomon's Seal still grows
or dogwoods bloom in the back,
or the garden space and cherry tree
are still near the railroad track.

There are no friendly faces to guide me.
I can't go home anymore.
But I'll keep the nuggets of memories
as the ragman closes the door.

Master Weaver

God is the weaver at the loom of life;

tending its warp and weft.

Thread by thread, the shuttle slides

until the cloth’s complete.

We cannot know the pattern planned;

we cannot read its way

but when the cloth is finally laid;

its colors, threading design;

we’ll have a measure of the faith we held
in the weaver of the cloth.

-Joy S. Barefoot

                                                                                                      

Bench memories

Bench Memories
                          -Joy S. Barefoot


No
words,
just
daddy
on the bench
beside me,
sharing
a cold lunch.

(Image of a bench)