A composer listens to his own music

i You stand still as a fence post, wings grace-noting the wires, listening, head down. All that sound inside your head and now outside! Abstracted -- holding the child at arm's length: is it perfect? is it whole? -- you are a bird at the edge of a forest of wood-notes, a purple stripe stepped away from a rainbow, a boat riding the sound waves of that deep inner ocean. ii Caged within the music bars: the creature quarried through the hours. The hunter, laying down his horn, stares startled at the unicorn now pastured gently in his bound: o beautiful bright beast of sound.