Drawn Together Toward Earth’s Molten Iron Core
Who’s to say we’re not drawn
by the same magnetic force
as any mariner’s compass,
because something drew
me down to the docks
on March 11, 2015,
when the thaw
finally arrived
after one
hundred
& one days
over the longest
winter in recent memory,
temperature of 54 degrees
the highest since December 1st
of the year before: there, just as
suspected, sprawled out for all to see,
the massive double-steel-hulled oil tanker
Atlantic Muse out of Hong Kong, no less!
Yes, I followed the unconscious pull, as if my body
adjusted to the magnetic declination mariners
have long been aware of as their compasses
pointed not at True North, but pulled by
variations in magnetic fields according
to each location. The Muse then drew
me back toward the map I’d
recently discovered, that
finely drawn isogonic
chart of the Atlantic
by Edmond Halley
in 1701 showing
lines of magnetic
variation, the
earliest such
publication.
It’s beautiful,
as most maps are
to any eye, but here
the early science adds
precision, & even the wording
of the cartouche drawn & written
there in the right-hand corner running
west from New England & New York down
to the Carolinas square in the heartland of North
America deserves quoting: The Curved Lines which are
drawn over the Seas in this Chart do shew at one View all
the places where the Variation of the Compass is the same.
The Numbers to them shew how many degrees the Needle declines
either Eastwards or Westwards from the true North ; and the Double
Line passing Bermudas and the Cape de Virde Isles is that where
the Needle stands true without Variation.
There, almost at that point of no
variation, Halley draws a perfect
compass rose radiating wind
points out from the exact
center of the map.
It didn’t stop there, this Muse,
but drove me hard back
toward Olson’s own
handwritten poem
known as The Compass Rose
just to see his hand there hard at work
on November 20th, 1965, showing us the way
migration leads always to a new center, as if today
with temperatures reaching a new high after a long
one hundred & one days one could reach into the center
of oneself corresponding to the molten iron core
of the Earth, which produces those variations
in magnetic fields according to one’s location.
Such declinations in one’s sailing or daily
peregrination must be adjusted to by
what some might call Mind, but
which I prefer to call Soul.
A month later, it’s no accident that Olson,
cartographer at heart, writes his next poem
in which he designates the coordinates of the island
before his eye, that light & heavy jewel, Ten Pound Island
at 207 degrees from magnetic North, intimating that she, the island,
& he, the man, feminine & masculine are linked at the center, & drawn
together toward earth’s molten iron core.
~ Robert Gibbons
Robert Gibbons, a former Gloucester resident, is the author of nine books of poetry. In 2013, in addition to completing a Trilogy of prose poems with Nine Point Publishing, he published Olson/Still: Crossroad, a brief study concerning the similarities in approach to art by Olson in words, and Clyfford Still in paint.
Enduring Gloucester 