Verse 1
He counted breath in thinning air,
Each step a measured prayer,
The mountain known, the risk declared,
No bravado there.
Just tired eyes and weakening knees,
A lifetime’s skill still sound,
Until one stone gave way beneath
The silence of the ground.
Verse 2
No storm arrived, no warning cry,
No thunder in the sky,
Just balance lost where balance held
A thousand times gone by.
Perfection bends at altitude,
Where truth strips every man,
One ordinary moment
Undoes the plan.
Chorus
And in the hush that followed falling,
When the world turned still and white,
Did he know the climb was over
As the cold put out the light?
Did he sit and meet it quietly,
With his name sewn into thread,
A living soul remembered still,
Not gone — just ahead.
Verse 3
The mountain kept him out of sight
For decades turning slow,
While history kept marching on
Far underneath the snow.
A human form in frozen time,
Cloth, bone, and breathless frame,
Yet somehow still unmistakably
A name.
Bridge
Seconds lengthen into years,
Pain loosens into calm,
The body fades, the mind stays clear,
The cold becomes a psalm.
No rescue call, no final sound,
No hand to hold instead,
Just courage standing quietly
Where fear had fled.
Final Chorus
So think of him when footing slips
In everyday small ways,
When tiny faults undo the best
Of carefully built days.
If giants fall from little things,
And plans are thinner than stone,
Let this be the mercy we learn:
We walk alone.
Outro
No summit shout, no victory won,
No judgment carved in stone,
Just one small step taken wrong —
And a man who met it alone.