The Soft Climb

Written for dVerse Poetics – “Adagio
for Strings”. Our host, Kim, asks us to
listen to the music and write a poem
expressing our thoughts and feelings.

A single step in the dark,
a breath held in the quiet room.
Your hand finds mine,
a trembling arc,
cutting through the heavy gloom.
We do not speak of loss or time,
or how the fragile hours bend;
we only climb, we softly climb,
toward a peak that knows no end.

And then the swelling sorrow breaks
into a vast and golden sea.
Every sleeping pulse awakes,
drowning all the world in we.
If love is grief with shining eyes,
a soaring cry the heart must make,
then let the highest chord arise,
and break for you, and break for me.

The final echo fades away,
suspended on a breathless thread.
The dark gives way to quiet day;
the words remain unsaid, unsaid.
No shadow falls across this grace,
as time holds still and lets us be:
just two hearts in an empty space,
bound by the quiet harmony.

NAR©2026

This is “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber

Poetics: Adagio for Strings

^{Everything on the elephant trunk was created by me, unless otherwise indicate, and may not be used without permission. Thanks for your consideration. NAR©2017-present.}