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Livingston Taylor Live

by Jean L. Kreiling

(Pilgrim Memorial State Park, Plymouth, MA, July 2010)

As lean and blameless as a farm boy, wearing
a plain white shirt and khakis, his guitar
held close but lightly, he might just be sharing
a tale or two with old pals at a bar.
But no, he’s on a stage; he sings to us,
a crowd drawn by our hunger for a fix
of laid-back Livingston. Just Liv — no fuss,
no needless noise, no pyrotechnic tricks,
just casually agile fretwork paired
with that brushed-denim voice. A bit of patter,
then songs of ease and trouble, love declared
and lost, old friends and other things that matter —
and while he sings, no blame or trouble weighs
more than the air of Carolina Days.


Jean L. Kreiling is a Professor of Music at Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts. Her poems have been published in The Evansville Review, The Formalist, Innisfree Poetry Journal, Mezzo Cammin, Think, and elsewhere; she has twice been a finalist for both the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award and the Dogwood Poetry Prize. Her interdisciplinary essays on music and poetry have appeared in academic journals including Ars Lyrica  and Mosaic.

See links to all sonnets by this author


Pat Jones
Published 23 August 2011