Poems by Linda Casebeer

On the Beach

by Linda Casebeer

From Canary Summer 2019

For the past twenty-five years, Linda has lived under a canopy of 100-year-old trees in the Cahaba River Watershed near the end of what-many-consider the oldest mountains in the world.

Everyone who could was driving away
from the cities everyone who could
was driving towards the oceans
and away from what radiated
Phillip Glass played piano for the film score
etudes that repeated unlearned lessons
everyone who could was driving away
from the cities water was everything
a woman POTUS not Hillary
had precipitated the chaos a woman
who wanted to appear tough answered
a simple attack with nuclearity
that night everyone who could was driving
towards the oceans under the stars
that night everyone who could was driving
away from the cities the country had shrunk
somehow the girls were young again
I drove the old blue station wagon that night
everyone who could was driving away
from the cities I drove in a line of cars
until we reached a dead end in the middle
of a congregation sitting in pews
staring straight ahead gently waving fans
from a funeral home to cool the humid air
electricity was gone everyone who could
was driving anywhere to buy gas
knowing we would run out after we had fled
the city I turned the wagon around towards
home and wondered what to do about water
since water was everything we could set out
pans to catch rain the way I had learned
as a child to catch rainwater for rinsing
hair soft and silky but would the first rains
be radioactive we had never stored water
or canned food for emergencies the stores
had closed after their windows were smashed
neon electric no longer mattered batteries
and bottled water gone no medicine
the girls were young and healthy for the moment
but they would need water where were the bomb
shelters the concrete geodesic domes
the soothsayers of the millennium warned
us we would need water when the end came
how could we exist eating handfuls of berries
from nandina bushes bark and root
while we waited for the acorns to fall
from the hundred-year-old oak
we had only grown ornamentals not
homesteaders we had no guns no way to fish
when floods had forced koi from their ponds
in the Botanical Gardens the koi had floated
away downstream nets had to be set as traps
we could walk the few miles there
and find a way to net the koi but the girls
would argue they should not be killed
on this earth where radioactivity was set
to spread until all skin burned
where was the cyanide to alleviate suffering
the way the etudes repeated everyone
who could was running frantic for more
in the dream water was everything
and the girls were young again

© Linda Casebeer

She Was Just Passing Through

by Linda Casebeer

From Canary Spring 2024

that April day when I found her
unbloodied lying flat against cobblestone
on the most photographed Victorian street
in the city I was walking
two leashed dogs and pulled them aside
to keep from tearing her apart
she could have been any lady of the evening
a little tipsy an autopsy of her stomach
would have revealed sweet berry fermentation
a build-up of yeast like the alcohol measured out
to millennials who flocked downtown on weekends
for cocktail brunches at The Essential
she was brown and dove gray the aureolin yellow
saved for her breast she wore a mask
but easily gave up her identity with waxed red
wingtips and one squared-off brilliant yellow stripe
the museum had been calling out for her
one member in particular with a whistle
ending in a sigh he had courted her with hip-hop
and the ritual of passing a berry to her
with the hope she would return the favor
and she had but now this
I don’t know what killed her
it could have been rampant influenza
or an accident of attraction to the bright lights
big city nights or flying under the influence
in any case North America has three billion
fewer birds than in 1970
a fact researchers keep trying to analyze
they know it’s more than outside cats
for two years Bird Nerd Jessie Griswold
walked slowly at dawn looking down
at these same sidewalks plazas and lawns
collecting carcasses of over four hundred
warblers ovenbirds yellow-billed cuckoos
hummingbirds and cedar waxwings
at the same time she asked us all
to place dots on windows
maybe dots could have saved this lady
who knows but dead is dead
when I passed that way days later
her body lay dessicated
across that same bloodless spot
I scooped her up with a rustling green shroud
that would end up at the dump
I knew my memory of her would be twofold
her weight of less than an ounce
and the length of time her body had remained
undisturbed by numerous people walking
past unaware of the numinous

© Linda Casebeer

The Keening

by Linda Casebeer

From Canary Spring 2019

As if someone had been lost
the sound mournful and low
from a human it seemed at first
though the source was unclear

several yards touching ours
turned up empty no moans
from injured individuals
so where was it coming from

downtown a railyard whistle
familiar and daily but not
so what a creature’s paw
caught in a trap or a tomcat

caterwauling not in daylight
a cote a bevy a dole a dule
a flight so many names
for a group of mourning doves

but none feeding on the ground
only a drab female cardinal
pecking around the hulls
of spent sunflower seeds

as the silence lengthened
I returned inside to the table
to pour over a box of half pastels
sixty colors Rembrandt’s

general selection for that day’s
lesson in abstraction earlier
Ed had finished his piece
so I was alone as the low wail

began again and I found
myself opening the back door
once more to stand still
and focus on a large dead bough