Keith Dunlap
The Night J.R. Ewing Drove Keith Moon to Rehab
There was trouble getting in and out of the car.
Hagman drove absentmindedly, forgetting to turn on the lights,
drove at a cautious speed into the Westwood night.
Keith Moon fiddled with the radio but couldn’t find a song
that didn’t make him want to crawl out of his skin.
“These drummers all suck,” he said, chain-smoking Marlboro Reds.
He climbed over the seat and into the back in order to lay down.
He drummed on the leather headrest, made faces, clowned around.
And all this time Larry Hagman kept his eyes fixed on the road.
But when he realized that he had forgotten to turn on the lights,
he flicked them on, so that they carved a path in front of the car,
so that he could clearly see the shoulder on the canyon side,
and, relaxing his grip a little on the steering wheel,
felt that he himself was something greater than the darkness
that he and his passenger had momentarily left behind.
