Me and J.S.Bach

When I was between myself:
When I was a young Ibis of a child
rare, extinct, new and teenage,
my soul (by which I mean
my thought world dipped in blood),
my soul was fine sand
sifted through what I heard.

I was golden winged but behind my eyes
I was as white as night.
I was, what the stars shed
and what we now call mud.
I was born to be crushed, refined
and loved.

Like any half-grown challenge
I was the change I sought to impose.
My pose awkward and quarrelsome
bashful and bold.
I did not listen
but heard a self-revealing music.
A music not understood
but rode with a wild confusion.

J.S.Bach. what did you and I have in common?
Me a thin green stick
planted in a common clay pot
and you the thunder of heaven
filtered through
endless fugal variations of awe?

Me with not a shred of musical accomplishment
(unless you call tuneless whistling symphonic),
and you
the irascible pugnacious German.
Father of 20 children
the sublime organist.

Yet I grew up in your counterpoint
and like any ibis
on the quicksilver waters of time
I danced.
I became a tenacious organist also
in my own teenage way
and I would play and play and play
potently enmeshed
in your harmonic gears
and the star-seeded journey
of my tender years.