Pharewell
Posted onI went four for five in my not so long goodbye
with a frown turned upside-down into a smile at the end
not on the soft velvety green of an upstate phairway
but on the gritty asphalt of my world capital
in the canyon of heroes is where my music stopped.
My run was bookended by skyscrapers
metal carcasses of the past
modern gleaming glass slabs of the present
between them a great north wood wrapped inside of traffic.
The music was a quick flowing stream of sonic love
rushing at breakneck speed into oblivion:
through a rain slick evening with glowstick sized drops it buzzed,
through a humid night that stuck you to your seat if you dared use it it thumped,
through a dark star-filled sky full of haves and have-nots it grooved,
through a clear blue sky that poured down on the concrete stalagmites it jammed,
through it all swirled the magical sounds of overflowing joy,
a wail of strings and keys and drums dancing with both structure and mayhem
and language fails to provide a better word than ‘smile’ which is a shame
for we all were well beyond ‘smiles.’
Encore! Encore! Then handshakes and rueful smiles,
a scattered goodbye made on a street corner and then nothing more,
except songs, pictures and memories to download to anyone
who wants to hear and see what once was.
I merely blinked and ten years had passed by.
Neon strobbed all around as I thought back to the mountains,
about the show I had seen two nights before,
about the cold walk back to the car with no light to guide us.
“I am significant!” screamed the dust spec into the night air,
“This is significant!” bellowed the waves from the stage
but an ancient kernel of truth, that this too shall pass,
kept haunting me, that it’s over,
this note is over, this song is over, this whole scene is over,
this whole era is over, is it the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?
Where do I go from here but home? And then what?
Those thoughts had disappeared when I heard the Broadway reprieve news
One more time! A precious gift not to be squandered and it wasn’t
a reprieve that ended with a fitting “…Reprise”
an up-beat ending that left you amped, not a down-beat ending that left you sad
but after the fist pumping and clapping had ceased there was and is still sadness
it cannot be escaped, where there is loss, there is sadness.
“I hope we passed the audition” said the red one as he passed by the mic,
the last time I would hear his voice with those others beside him,
and I looked up past the fifty stories of brick and glass and steel,
saw the azure sky dotted with wisps of white and grinned.
We both passed the audition and we will both move on
and this too shall pass, but I will never forget.
