dropstone

Hannele Luhtasela

like time,
ice moved me
without asking for my destination.

like always,
i went along,
hoping for something solid.

i got what i asked for—somehow—
now forever surrounded by sediment,
cementing my position

as i drown. stone embedded in stone.

if i had fallen onto land
i would be called erratic—
now i'm just an error

in the timeline, an intruder
slicing through eons
like a meteorite through thick air.

in me, the seabed felt
the weight of the future.
i only felt fooled.

The Science

The poem was inspired by a rock I came across in Aberdeen, Scotland, which had a small sign which read ‘Glacial Erratic’. I liked the sound of those two words in combination and ended up writing a couple of poems about it. A glacial erratic is a stone that was transported over a large distance by glacial ice, and ended up far from its original location when the ice melted. A dropstone can be a kind of glacial erratic, but instead of being dropped onto land, a dropstone fell out of a melting iceberg and ended up in the water, becoming embedded in sediment.

The Poet

Hannele Luhtasela is a biologist, editor, photographer, and poet from Helsinki, Finland. They write poetry in English and Swedish, and have a great love for science. One day soon they hope to publish a book of poetry. You can get in touch with them through their website or on Facebook.

Next poem: East of Zero by Clint Wastling