Ruth Padel
Lodestone
Lodestone
I am Magnes the shepherd who found a pebble
stuck to a nail in his boot and discovered the mineral
Attract. I am Heinz Lowenstam, geologist from Silesia
who identified magnetite in tooth caps
of a homing mollusc. I am magnetotactic bacteria
knitted with crystals which orient to earth’s
magnetic field. I am also your garden robin
who reads geomagnetic lines the way you scan
a newspaper, navigating folded thunderclouds at night
by neural pathways of Cluster N wired to my left eye
from light-processing regions of the brain.
I am the photoreceptor protein which draws young
monarch butterflies hatched on a month-long
journey to the same old Mexican forest their ancestors knew.
I am salamander, spiny lobster, bee, crocodile and whale
and also that flock of cranes passing silently over the moon.
I am fish, mammal, fungi and bird. I am two billion years
of life-forms steering by the minerals of which I am made
and molecular feel for the pull of the earth.
What about us, poor wanderers with no inner compass?
You inscribe the globe. You map, you have words,
you foresee your death. Isn’t that enough?