Stones speak in long drawn-out growls,
seismic waves that reach deep into the infrasonic
or in a rapid clatter-clatter-clatter:
collisions producing sounds.

They speak in hot rushes of lava, hardening into basalt.
They speak in silent impacts, in the vast dark between worlds.

Their voices are silenced under the surface of the sea
as it wears them down, removes, atom by atom, their very selves.
They listen instead, to their brother the coral, growing atom by atom.

They speak once again on the beach,
in the rolling of the waves, a trillion tiny grains
whispering as they move past each other, pushed and pulled
by the water.

They listen to our words, and they cannot understand.