Wehlage's poem tries to pin down a feeling that won't stay still: the way music, or something like it, lifts a person into joy. It opens with a small stumble, "its like music" becoming "its i like music", as if the speaker is catching himself mid-thought. From there the images pile up fast: a dandelion in April, rainbows, rain ribbons, sap bubbling up through a tree. Nearly all of them suggest rising, opening and spring.
The speaker seems thrilled and a little breathless. The line breaks and loose punctuation give the poem a spilling-over quality, as though the feeling arrives faster than the words. The earth "opens up" and receives, a bird leaves the nest, and breathing out lets breath back in, so joy feels natural and cyclical rather than forced.
The ending is a surprise. All of this energy, the poem says, comes from "the head of a man / who walks up the street", his "odor, his essence." The mood stays warm and ecstatic, but it becomes more human and grounded.