Johann's Boy

His family jokingly
suggested he might play
his fiddle outside the Essex
on the loop one evening
returning from dinner in the
pleasant haze of their love.
He took them up on it, young
eight-year-old, call him
Johnny, Johnny Generic for
a boy small enough to play
his three-quarter size cello
sitting outside next morning
in the early chill, warming up
his fingers with the prelude
to Bach’s first unaccompanied
suite for the instrument, in his
hands seeming full-size, case
open in front of him already
filling with passersby’s pocket
change he had declared he would
spend to buy video games; and if
his periwigged master had been
able to hear over the hoot
of his celestial diapason, perhaps
he would have smiled at yet one more
Johnny to queue up and add to the ten
survived—

but hey, who’s counting?