You descend without announcement,
a grey-winged visitor who arrives
as though you've been invited by the soil itself.
What quietness lives in your percussion—
each strike a small benediction,
you write a language the dust understands.
You pull the earth's breath upward,
teach the root that drowning
and becoming are not different things.
In your grey hour, you ask nothing
but permission to darken the stone,
to silver the glass, to make small things gleam.
You are kind to the sorrowful—
your fall echoes what we cannot say,
your ending opens the air.
Come again when we've forgotten you.
Come when the world grows brittle.
You alone know how to soften stone.