Best Nostalgiagirl Poems
The sun barbequed the skin, raising a tenderized pink glow
to the cheeks of the children in the ramshackle red barn.
The three story hay loft partly empty was bristling with tikes.
Pincushioned with straw, sharp as needles,
in their hair, tee-shirts and socks
an “itch-o-rama” of gross magnitude.
Hoarse screams of “Geronimo!”
propel a girl child out ward over the abyss;
letting go directly over the haystack on the first floor.
Barn boards groan under the weight of her flailing form.
Sweet, so sticky sweet, was the air with sweat, hayseed, and manure.
Red welts form on errant scratches rising up on the her skinny arms.
The boy plops from the thick dangling rope inches from her.
“Hi-Ho Silver!” he hollers; kissing her cheek with a big wet raspberry,
running deer-like from the barn doors toward the pastures awaiting bossy.
Up the stone tossed rock wall he clambers at ankle breaking pace.
Leaping from stone wall to the cow’s back;
“Come on, chicken!” he yells.
The girl follows more timidly watching out for
the broken, blue-bottle, glass shards
that poke out from between the fieldstones.
Reaching cow side, she blows brown hair from her face.
Hands on her tiny hips, she eyes the cow and rider.
The cow evil eye stares at her from one side of its huge head.
He slaps the cows rump. Sneakers wail into cowside
and with an indignant bellow of disgust rider and cow are off, girless,
toward the saltlick, leaving the kiss
and the red barn, but a memory.
The cracker crisp Maine air
rang with the rooster’s revel.
Moving day, time to clean the hens shed.
Monstrous three story hatchery,
thousands of burnt umber; beauties a laying.
Lace edged bobby socks, red Keds, barrettes, T-shirt and short;
and off to the hen house, pony tail bouncing.
Immersed in the acrid reek of chicken dew;
Blue jean boys, Georgie, Wayne,
Aunt Donna and pony tail girl;
wade through squawk, cluck and doodle.
Horrific chore, girl eraser, the boys gawk on.
Up they all must go! Sunny side up!
Up, up, with the upside down
omelet laying peckers.
Grande dames lance laces,
buttons and barrettes.
wing flap, feathers fly,
deep brown questioning eyes.
“Get along with you three!”
Aunt Donna screams spitting feathers
above the din. “Up stairs
with the whole damn lot of them!”
The boys eye the girl and with a tilt of her chin
and scrawny pecker in each diminutive hand;
they troop gingerly over the sawdust refuse strewn floor,
up the tangled trio go, up!