This is for the artists who find their paths crossed with motherhood

for the painters whose fingers smear through ketchup or snot

more than acrylics or oils

This is for the vocalists who enter the booth already hoarse

from cheering for an unsure soccer player the night before

and for the poet whose best work yet is scribbled in orange crayon

on the back of a Dora the Explorer coloring book

This is for the graphic designer making fliers for the bake sale

and for the actor who voices the adventures

of a stuffed flamingo and his bovine side kick by night light

This is for the dancer whose feet ache from thirteen rounds of the hokey pokey

and for the novelist with fifth chapter writers block

with six other incomplete stories and a feverish toddler

Remember when they showed you how to draw a line

then blur it

Remember when you learned that a broken note

was a nuance

Remember when you stopped forcing the words to rhyme

and found a pattern

When the white space changed from negative to

breathing room

Remember when you missed the rehearsal so

the moment was real

And when you spun left instead of right and created

visual contrast

There is mess in motherhood and art

There is room for both structure and play

Rules and romp

And you will learn how the muse flows in and out with the tides and seasons

You will observe the colors of your heart as sun beams in their hair

And the sounds of your soul as the gleeful shouts from atop a slide

And the words you whisper in your sleep

will fly from the lips of a preschooler with a loose tooth

And you will pick up your paints and pen

Open your software and pull back the curtain

You will do all of this with the knowledge that what you now create

Does not end at the end of your brush or the last burst of applause

But flows through veins and beats through footsteps as they run upstairs

And when she comes to you with pink in her cheeks and hair out of alignment

And asks what is art

You can answer with a warble or a blended hue

I am.  This is.  You are.