You Don’t Know How to Dance?

 You Don’t Know How to Dance?

(“Everyone was rejoicing and making sacrifices to God in their great joy.” Nehemiah 12:43b)

You’ve told me you don’t know how to dance,
but I don’t believe you. We were all meant to
move along this planet with undetected rhythms
that rhyme with our heart.

I know the songs bubble like champagne
when you think of your children in the sun
and your mother, the central one,
and your father, departed too soon and too long.

I know the songs are sad sometimes,
I’ve heard you sing them, and I have cried too.
I know the songs are silent as clouds,
soothing as breezes touching the trees,
and punctuated with laughter when kittens
upend the day, or a daughter makes it play
with the box the mail came in.

You’ve told me you don’t know how to dance,
and I still don’t believe you. The earth and sky
have taken a chance on you today
and are waiting for your face, shining like the sun,
to find a private space where maybe the frogs keep time
and robins fill the air with melodies between the
garden and the pond.

I know the songs are choking sometimes, the pain
sticks in our throats sometimes. And that’s when,
with your permission,
I’ll chime in and finish the lines that you cannot.
And then, gaining our composure (or not)
We’ll sing that last refrain together (there is no other
audience that the spirit wind)
and let the holy mixture of laughter and tears
create a space where we forget our troubles
for just a moment. And know, in the next pang of trouble,
we can go there again.