the Language of Stones

The strangest landscape begins to look familiar. I can walk this country in my sleep: signs of divination, the Maze of Emergence, the ritual dreams for saving the soul of the world. The sounds are as intimate as breath. My lips move over the syllables like a blind woman’s fingers over the face of her first-born. Insects hum at the forest’s edge & the sun stops overhead. Smoke rises from a ring of river stones & the ashes are thrown downwind. The smell of sage & cedar will be on my skin forever. Everything becomes sacred. Bits of thread flutter from the bushes, as if marking a trail.

I am learning to speak the language of stones. Like rivers over rock, life flowing in the bones, a fire in the wind, an ocean over sand. I am traveling home, where I first began, knowing for the first time, where I once began. Full circle.

Language of Stones
words & music © by Geoff Bartley 1990 & 1994