Scott Hightower
“What will survive of us is love”
Philip Larkin
December, 1971. A light snow. The Taft Hotel.
Our room across the street, overlooked
the Winter Garden stage door. I was green
and this was to be my first taste of Broadway.
By the time the lights and trumpets
lifted on the “Loveland” number,
I was lost in years monogrammed
across silk sashes, wigs, and in the follies
of relationships — only a few going right.
Are we ever awake, or is all of this dream?
Not a tiny fleck of foreshadowing that,
given a handful of years and a little
more seasoning, this city would become
my home, the anvil of my art, the abode
of my glorious ghosts for over thirty years.
2011, primed with anticipation and an
entirely new gaggle of friends, I rustle
in my seat through “the revival;” –– cast,
lose, and reel, myself back in; once again
in the bars of “…spend sleepless nights….”