A poem called ‘Parkinson’s Disease’

Parkinson’s Disease

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.

Next to the voice and touch of those we love,

food may be our last pleasure on earth -
a man on death row takes his T-bone

in small bites and swishes each sip

of the jug wine around in his mouth,

tomorrow will be too late for them to jolt

this supper out of him. She strokes

his head very slowly, as if to cheer up

each separate discomfited hair sticking up

from its root in his stricken brain.

Standing behind him, she presses

her check 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 in his turn, 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 then to the bathroom,

where she lowers his pants and removes

the wet diaper and holds the spout of the bottle

to his old penis until he pisses all he can,

then puts on the fresh diaper and pulls up his pants.

When they come out, she is facing him,

walking backwards in front of him

and 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 them closely: she could be teaching him

the last steps that one day she may teach me.

At this moment, he glints and shines,

as if it will be only a small dislocation

for him to pass from this paradise into the next.