Dave Bonta's short poem is about the loss of creative energy, the moment when a person's own music simply stops. The speaker says the song has "died," and the image that follows is blunt: a note turned to ash, something that once had sound and warmth and is now burnt out and weightless.
The rest of the poem turns the speaker's instruments into suffering bodies. The flageolette, a small wind instrument, catches an "ague," an old word for a fever with shivering fits. The harp is "shot," which could mean both broken and wounded by a bullet, and it sits "in a bed of nails," an image of pain with no comfort or rest in it. The speaker never says "I'm sad," but the damage to the instruments says it for them.
The mood is bleak and a little darkly playful. The odd, almost comic word choices keep the grief from sounding melodramatic, yet the ending leaves us with stillness and hurt. It reads like a creative block felt as a physical injury.