A Composer's Thoughts

Nights without sleep and days
That burn like smoldering fire,
Nerves with the ceaseless cry 
Of wind in a tight-drawn wire-
Years of this leaving me nothing
But a handful of songs like these,
That people think were happily written
In an hour of ease.

A little while when I am gone
My life will live in music after me,
As spun foam lifted and borne on
After the wave is lost in the full sea.
A while these nights and days will burn
In song with the bright frailty of foam,
Living in light before they turn
Back to the nothingness that is their home.