Where maybe the baby the baby may
have tasted vanilla carrot mint garlic anise
in the saltwater surround of her prebirth bubble
may have swallowed or breathed these scents
into her lungs through the amniotic fluid
until she grew up to ask why Europa
why are we going to Europa looking for life
we ask as if we are on the spaceship
with a poem painted on its side rocking
rocketing into space to find the ingredients
of life on the moon Europa beginning with water
a possible salt sea under its icy crust
the same week Europa blasted off
news photos captured the Amazon River
in a wicked drought forming lakes and beaches
on the river that begins in the Peruvian Andes
travels through Ecuador Columbia Venezuela
Bolivia Brazil and empties into the Atlantic Ocean
once drenched in heat and humidity on a boat
moving along the Amazon I dozed and awoke
certain I was in the desert witnessing a mirage
on a lifeboat ploughing into so much sparkling sand
wisdom said drop a coin into the Amazon
if you wished to return
—
Linda Casebeer has lived and worked in Birmingham, Alabama for thirty years. She has published poems in various literary journals including Slant, Earth’s Daughters, Canary, and Hospital Drive as well as two collections of poems, The Last Eclipsed Moon and Charm and Strange.
