The wheel is bright where hands have turned it.
Elsewhere the brass has learned the rain.
A crescent hangs beyond the mountain,
small enough to enter through the glass.

The chart lies under an stone.
Its corners cannot follow every wind.
Someone has brought a cloth for morning,
then left the instrument uncovered.

I turn the wheel a little, nothing more.
The distant ridge moves through the circle.
No star has shifted at my bidding.
The change belongs to where I stand.

How often we mistake a clearer window
for the arrival of another world.
The valley had its roads before I saw them;
the moon was never waiting for my word.

Yet care can make a difference to the seeing:
a tightened screw, a lens protected from the dust,
a record that admits the clouds obscured it,
a blank where certainty would break our trust.

Daylight gathers on the terraces.
The houses lose their lamps against the hill.
I fold the chart along its creases
and leave the stone to keep it still.

Not everything observed becomes an answer.
Not every silence needs a name.
The wheel holds steady under my departing hand.
The mountains stay beyond the frame.