~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Al Maginnes

Bright and Shining

Through technology I don’t fathom

I’m watching Bob Dylan play

the show I stood on a hill

and watched two nights ago.

And no machine is perfect,

or it would filter out the people

speaking too close to the camera,

the voices counterpart to the band.

They’ve been drinking since five,

and, even at amphitheater prices,

the need to talk overrides

the imperative to listen. The Baldwin crescendos,

the band kicks it up a notch,

and the talk subsides, in awe,

I hope, of what they witness

from a better spot than mine,

among strangers, but strangers

who knew how to listen and didn’t

sing along or try to explain

each lyric and guitar lick to

whoever is within earshot,

people who might know

how hard it is to remake yourself

and to love how some can change

seemingly before us, yet remain the same.

Listening to those songs again,

I still have no wisdom to pass, no knowledge

of anything but to listen for

what comes bright and shining

rising above the voice of others.

Al Maginnes has published ten full-length collections and four chapbooks of poetry, most recently his new and selected poems, Fellow Survivors (Redhawk Publications, 2023). A new collection, Second Line, is forthcoming. New poems and reviews appear in Offcourse, Arkansas Review, Rattle, Lake Effect, and many others. He is retired from teaching and lives in Raleigh, NC.