McCUE: Bill, do you want to read some poems for us?
MATCHETT: If that's relevant to what we're doing.
REED: Certainly.
McCUE: Is that okay?
MATCHETT: Yeah, sure. McCUE: Alright.
MATCHETT: You had the most... McCUE: Brian has some.
BRIAN: So what would you like to read of your poems.
MATCHETT: You wanted me to read a Roethke poem!
REED: Okay why don't we start with some Roethke poems?
MATCHETT: Well, I suppose I should read me first so we build up rather than down, but... (LAUGHING)
(CROSSTALK) REED: Oh, no no. McCUE: Uh, I dunno about that. MATCHETT: You wanted me to read, McCUE: There is no hierarchy.
MATCHETT: and I love it dearly. "My Papa's Waltz".
Where did it go?
There it is.
"My Papa's Waltz"
The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing [was] not easy.
We romped until the pans
slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.
The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.
You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.
That poem's still clinging to that shirt, all those years later.
I love that poem.