Memorizing the Words

Music wove threads through the cracks of our broken home.
Mom took her time, did it right, dancing through rooms,
shaking her body down to the ground under the eyes of Jupiter.
Dad favored nights in Mozambique, fat chances
that broke with the morning and lingered in the
hands of a poetry man and a boxer.
Winding up mountains in a blue sedan,
there was always music playing in Dad’s car.
We memorized the words to songs of the 70s and sang
so loud, our voices echoed off the windows.
We learned to recognize the rasp of a tambourine man,
and absorbed the blues though our skin.
On rainy days, Mom gathered us around the piano
to sing the refrains of Siamese cats who did what they
pleased and girls dressed in cinders, spinning in circles.
Our tiny voices, saturated in the carefree pitch
of youth, are trapped forever in the loop of a reel to reel,
singing a song about looking for a home with all our family there.