A Musician’s Tale

Betsy Joseph

March 24, 2024

No longer in the midst of middle age,

hair graying and loosely tied back,

the guitarist relayed his vigor at a local college

through medleys of Celtic reels,

lively jigs, and soft laments.

Interspersed were mentions of other venues—

concert halls, public libraries, and once,

surprisingly, even a bookmobile.

Attendance, we learned, is generally healthy

at his typical Celtic events,

but his bookmobile gig yielded just a small group

of three keen and curious souls.

And gladly did he play for them.

As this earnest minstrel of Celtic strains

resumed his pre-planned set,

my thoughts soon shifted to a different scene:

a tired Texas town, a nondescript bookmobile,

and an audience of three attentive locals

joined by a colorful array of books—

wondrous varieties of lore—

wide and narrow, both vintage and new,

these cramped listeners with spines stiff 

from long-held positions on dusty shelves,

perhaps longing to kick up their pages

and dance a jig or two.

Betsy Joseph lives in Dallas and has poems which have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. She is the author of two poetry books published by Lamar University Literary Press: Only So Many Autumns (2019) and most recently, Relatively Speaking (2022), a collaborative collection with her brother, poet Chip Dameron.