Driving Myself to a Poetry Reading

By Billy Collins

Halfway there I pull on the headlights
and drift down the road, blazing
like the other cars in the weekday dusk.
I find something on the jazz station
and listen to the chords shifting
under the music like the many gears of the song.
The autumn air is cool and I can see
a few early stars through the windshield,
but like Caesar's Gaul, I feel divided.

There is a part of me that wants
to let go of the wheel, climb over the seat
and fall asleep curled in the back.
This is the part I would like to see
blindfolded some morning, dragged
into a courtyard, and shot.

Another part of me wants to be up on the hood,
a chrome ornament in the shape of a bird
leaning aerodynamically into the wind.
And now I can feel my voice begin to fly
ahead of the car winging it into the night,
searching the landscaped below for a podium,
a shaded lamp, a glass, and a pitcher of water.

This is the part I will still wonder about
when I am dying, staring up at the ceiling,
the part that is eager to perch on the rim
of that glass, wet its hard little beak,
and begin singing every song it ever knew.

Parkinson's Disease

By Galway Kinnell

While spoon-feeding him with one hand
she holds his hand with her other hand,
or rather lets it rest on top of his,
which is permanently clenched shut.
When he turns his head away, she reaches
around and puts in the spoonful blind.
He will not accept the next morsel until he has completely chewed this one.
His bright squint tells her he finds the shrimp she has just put in delicious.
She strokes his head very slowly, as if
to cheer up each hair sticking up
from its root in his stricken brain.
standing behind him, she presses
her cheek to his, kisses his jowl,
and his eyes seem to stop seeing
and do nothing but emit light.
Could heaven be a time, after we are dead,
of remembering the knowledge flesh had from flesh? The flesh
of his face is hard, perhaps
from years spent facing down others
until they fell back, and harder
from years of being himself faced down
and falling back, and harder still
from all the while frowning
and beaming and worrying and shouting
and probably letting go in rages.
His face softens into a kind
of quizzical wince, as if one
of the other animals were working at
getting the knack of the human smile.
When picking up a cookie he uses
both thumbtips to grip it
and push it against an index finger
to secure it so that he can lift it.
She takes him to the bathroom,
and when they come out, she is facing him,
walking backwards in front of him
holding his hands, pulling him
when he stops, reminding him to step
when he forgets and starts to pitch forward.
She is leading her old father into the future
as far as they can go, and she is walking
him back into her childhood, where she stood
in bare feet on the toes of his shoes
and they foxtrotted on this same rug.
I watch then closely: she could be teaching him
The last steps that one day she may teach me.
At this moment, he glints and shines,
as it if will be only a small dislocation
for him to pass from this paradise into the next.

Readings of October 3, 2004