When the Music Starts

When the music starts, we remember our bodies,
how they move without asking permission,
how the bass line climbs up through the floorboards
and rewrites the rules of propriety.

When the music starts, inhibition dissolves.
The accountant becomes liquid at the hips,
the grandmother finds her teenage swagger,
the wallflower blooms into bright motion.

When the music starts—
Bodies colliding and
spinning like planets,
gravity loosens its
tyrannical grip!

When the music starts, we become congregation,
a temple of sweat and released laughter,
where strangers brush shoulders like old friends
and time loses track of its own rhythm.

The bass drum pounds out our shared heartbeat,
the guitar strings hum our collective nerve—
when the music starts, we are larger
than the sum of our separate selves.

When the music starts we are thunder we are lightning we are downpour we are flood—
every worry every sorrow every small defeat drowning in this tide of blood
and rhythm and the ancient knowing that our bodies were built for this—
for the losing and the finding and the sweet communal bliss!

When the music starts, we remember
what we forgot we knew about joy—
how it lives in the spaces between
heartbeat and breath, between
reaching and touching, between
the song we hear and the song
we become when we dare
to let the music start.

When the music starts,
when the music starts,
when the music starts—
we are finally, fully,
magnificently
alive.