notes in the air

My boys are riding my husband like a horse.
Heidi is walking her three steps at a time
and yelling her own applause.
It is snowing outside.
The strains of music between us all are lovely and they
catch -
they catch in my throat.

Sometimes the volume is too high.
Sometimes it is too long of a rest.
And, sometimes, it does not sound like music at all.

I am caught and swirling and dizzy and helpless
in the rhythm and the pulls.
Sometimes I am dying.
Sometimes I am partly alive.
Sometimes I am fully present to the feel
and the sound
the look of the notes in the air
between our eyes.

And my heart is beating its red blood,
sounding its crucial time.
My son tells me to put my hand on his chest and feel -
feel it beating -
the sound of his youth,
the sound of my motherhood,
which is always separation;
always giving my own life to another’s heart...

Watch me run! See how fast! See how far!

Sometimes I cannot bear the music.
Still, it relentlessly carries us, all together,
drawing and taking and throwing and giving and singing
crying and hurting and hitting and guarding,
but swirling -
caught in the music.
The drum beats the blood.
Heidi falls down.
She gets up.
We go on.
We go on.
We go on.