Insomnia brings strange dreams. Unwanted
presents consume my days with a tight
ribbon curled question: how to get rid of such
worthless things I'll never use. Last night
someone gave me a photo of my father learning
to play the oboe. Sitting in a straight back chair,
he practiced Exercise One from his new book
on Parkinson's disease. I don't know what this
movement was meant to teach him, maybe it was
a way to fight stillness, to buoy up dying cells,
to teach muscles melody again. Maybe it was
a way to set his jaw against the silent composition
of disease. This is my father rounding his lips
into mourning dove Os, his waist loose as a girl's,
his chest swelling with cartoon pride. He knows he's
got it right if his fingers are fluid and never stop, if his
notes meet each other to form a new definition
of harmony, if the song we all imagine never ends.