A band is playing in the next room
polka, all hurdy gurdy like, and it reminds me
of my grandparents at my brother’s wedding.
My father is playing a raspy saxophone
rising in octave. I imagine his face, strained
but in love, his heart working furiously
what we love most exerts our pulse
more strenuously, makes our limbs
thump and throb, and our head go light
so my father feels each note, and only each note,
a whole world fallen wayside but for polka,
his parents carouseling like teenagers

I wait outside the cracked door
and the music stops. My grandparents
are long dead; in two years,
a stroke will steal my father’s music.
In this caesura I can hear the joyful chattering
of people, catching their breath between dances,
peeling themselves back to the crowd around them
their voices come together like
a great melody, each instrument indistinguishable
from the whole breathing body of life
pausing at a way point, feet aching, waiting.
My father inhales, loses himself in the music
dancing resumes and the world tumbles away

I listen to the people dancing with joyous abandon,
thinking how sometimes life can be so careless