A Merciful Sensorial Symphony

He reads horizons
as if they were scores left open,

lines of distance
rising and falling
on an unseen staff,

each mile a quiet measure
where something begins
already carrying its ending.

At certain pauses the music gathers,

a cup cooling in a remembered hand,
a bridge holding two halves of a decision

 not yet spoken.

Silence leans close
like someone about to forgive.

First movement…

There are orchards
where time ripens unevenly,

apples bruised with what was loved,
pears softening toward what may yet be.

He walks through them slowly,
hearing beneath the wind
a steady undertone,

loss learning its shape,
joy refusing to disappear.

Even the air seems to say:
stay a moment longer
or leave now,
but listen.

Second movement…

Cities of glass tremble with reflection,
faces passing like fragments of unfinished chords.

Regret curls in narrow streets,
not as flame but as warmth that lingers after,

the body’s heart remembering what the mind cannot hold.

Signposts flicker at corners:

rest here,
turn back,
become otherwise and each one feels true
for a breath before dissolving.

Third movement…

He gathers what he can,

a mountain easing snow from its cornices,

like letting go of an old name,
a river relearning its direction without apology,
a sparrow stitching its brief song
into the fabric of morning.

He feels it now,
not as thought,

but as rhythm:

the inexorable unfolding,
movement into movement,
no final note yet struck,
yet all of it already underway

.

Final movement…

Still he rises,
not escaping but carried,

held within currents that ask nothing
but willingness to continue.

Patience stands beside him,
quiet as breath between notes.

A final tremolo shimmers…

Ahead, a turning,

soft, unannounced,
familiar as a remembered voice just out of hearing.

And there,

from the ground that never truly releases us,

a feather lifts,

slow, improbable,
answering a music no one can stop,

floating upward toward another way station
patient death just ahead.