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Rites of Passage by Dan Barfield

Rites of Passage          There are “rites of passage” that every boy goes through. And I suppose that there are also such rites of passages for girls as well. For boys, turning 16 and getting your driver's license seems to be the big one today. But when I was a boy, the first, and therefore the most important rite of passage was getting your first shotgun. Shotgun. Not rifle. Not pistol. A pistol is very good at what it is designed for, which is shooting other people. Beyond that it’s useless. A rifle is very good for what it is designed for, but this was the deep coastal south and the woods were thick, making for limited visibility and short shots. The biggest game was white tail deer and wild hogs. the average shot was less than thirty yards. Most hunting was wing shooting for Quail over an uncle’s Pointers, or for rabbits, and squirrels. It was table hunting, not killing for pleasure or trophies.           Killing something just to kill it was a thing my granddaddy could ne
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Anastsia Island Morning by Dan Barfield

  Anastsia Island Morning             You know what it's like on Anastasia Island early in the morning when the tide is flat low and before the sun has come over the curve of the earth? When the sky is still dark but turning pink and gold and purple on the eastern horizon. .The sun is shinning through the ocean then, and the ocean is lite from below, shinning all silver blue. When the sky is still dark but turning pink and gold and purple on the eastern horizon. .sky is all pink and gold and purple and the ocean is flat and glowing all silver-blue. It’s brighter than the sky then, and looks like it’s lite from below. Little shore birds run peeping at the edge of the tide and Pelicans fly just above the water in military like precision. When the only sounds are the lapping of the water, the peeping of the shore birds, and the breeze in the palm trees behind the sand dunes. Then the sun begins to race up over the horizon. Just as it has cleared the ocean it seems to jump those last
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Stormy Thursday

   S tormy Thursday   So I sit now,  patio and coffee- Darkening sky- As the storm flexes its muscles. The trees dance-   Some wild dance. Wild and primordial Dance- Wind rhythm dance.   I could dance with the trees   If I were younger -Dan Barfield   (4-10-2019)
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The Witch's Grave

  The Witch's Grave A story from childhood in the Georgia Low Country   Marvin Daniel.Barfield                                                                                                                            In the summer I was free from the prison of school and ran wild and half naked on the bluff. The tidal creeks and marsh were my playground. And when my cousins came to visit we swam and fished and crabbed. We carried belt knives, played mumble peg, camped on the island hammocks in the marsh, and sometimes fought each other with bloody noses and black eyes. We were boys and it was a wild and free time, and we were cousins only a year apart. Nothing was off limits to us except the deep woods. We were forbidden to even cross the berm of the railroad tracks that stood like the Great Wall of China between the civilized and the savage.               Now we were twelve and thirteen years old and growing up wild and free. Usually being told that we could not d
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