After an evening swim, I sat outside on my little veranda with a pot of freshly brewed raspberry leaf tea and sipped its fruity deliciousness. I counted the stars as they burned themselves into the heavens. They scattered across the moonlit sky one by one. The evening shifted to darker and darker shades of blue as time grew older and I wondered what the stars were singing.

Do you ever hear the stars singing?

It is said that the stars sing loudly over the desert. That’s what the Bushmen in the Kalahari believe. Attuned to the energies of the Earth and the Universe, they tell stories of hearing the star soaked music filling the night air. Some say that they’ve woven these star songs into their own music. The Bushmen also believed that those who could not hear the stars singing suffered a terrible sickness of the soul, for they were not attuned to the invisible strings and threads that tie us all to Spirit and to the land.

This story brings to mind a poem by Hankasso (/Han=kass’o), a Kalahari Bushmen poet from the late 1800s whose translated work is published in an anthology that I bought several years ago. In his poem titled “What the stars say” he wrote:

“I grew up listening to the stars
the stars saying: ‘tsau! and “tsau!’
it is always summer when you hear the stars say ‘tsau!’

I’ve not heard the stars sing myself, but it’s such an enchanting thought. I imagine that what the Bushmen speak of is similar to the wild whispers and subtle nudges of wisdom that find their way into my heart when I deep practise stillness and immerse myself in Nature. Stories and poems like this remind me that the mystery is always there, whether we notice or understand it or not. The wild Earth always has something to say to those who wish to listen. And art is in the listening, for when you tap into your intuitive senses and listen with the ears of your heart, chances are you’ll be transformed by the profound beauty of what you hear.

“Some call it augury; I call it listening to the land, and its dreamings.” ~ Sharon Blackie