2 Poems by Leah Umansky

A Happy Ending

A ship isn’t built to stay safely tied to harbor. All the ways we wander and wave: the sails in the wind, the convex of their girth, the flummox of their flail.

The last decade, its nearing of time, and the ways I cling to what I cling to: of what belongs, of what is far-reaching, of what is bound for refuge or for naught.

*

I know, the hope of the ship is a larger world seeming; is a war unto itself, kept tight with cargo and a surplus of provisions. How deftly woven the traces of our memory are.  Sometimes, I think it is easier to bring yourself under scrutiny. To look at the waves beneath the darkness and the history at the heart of what is worse than what you think is worse. Sometimes, we are our worst enemy and each snapshot of ourselves is another glimpse another [snapshot] [snapshot] [snapshot] and enough shots together give you a movie, or a passage to action.  

Do you become the stronger factor?

Do you become the half-dead surge?

*

The Governor says that nice isn’t everything. A lot of people are nice. When did nice become so overrated? I don’t want to put anyone on a pedestal, but I am retreating into myself, carrying my fears, my sensitivities, my selflessness into exile; why am I ignoring what belongs to me? The woman I made is a woman I need to follow. Niceties belong to purpose and to sense. I could tumble forward, or enjoy each curve, each arc, each shake in the wind. I can reimagine myself re-opening.

I can imagine myself remembering.  

What appears, what survives will be what I build :: what I stand by :: what I cleave to

*

I need to rise above my imagining. 

in the world I’ve created for myself 

I must remember to reimagine myself making modifications

why disrupt when so much is deftly woven in tides?

…………………………..I can ride or sink

What if this is the story?  

*

We finished Jane Eyre in class last week and a student writes: “I like a happy ending.” I like one, too, and what might be can story behind me. What might never be, can cling at dock, can rock to comfort, back and forth and back and forth, can sooth itself to unworry. I would cradle that fear. I want to. What happens, what belongs, what thrives, how can one know? Why should we? 

The Second Arrow

Everyone is saying the word, joyous.  Everyone is recognizing such joy now.   Are you?

*

Another rocket launched off to the moon yesterday. My imagination, my wants – they both get the better of me.  Still, I am happy to want all the same. 

*

It doesn’t change just because this is the Time of ________. 

Look we also lived. It is like watching a dream sometimes; you don’t know what side to err, what side to yearn, or what side to learn from.  There is an understanding for the pleasures of the flow. This will never be the same. This landscape, that landscape, the internal landscape – forever changed, garnished and re-garnished:  a panorama of uncertainty, but a reminder to be present. 

*

Within this trembling, is a wet roar, is a wheel turning and you must have faith in the turn of the wheel. 

*

The Tree arrived in Rockefeller Center though it won’t see large crowds. It will loom above in its singularity and vibrancy as a reminder. Soon, we will be in the new year, and what then? 

*

I am not on the younger side of things and it makes my life difficult right now. I am something other than available; I am available and unavailable all in one:  a heyday of singularity and caution.  Unraveling and then spooling back in; what to make with the swindle. I don’t know. The joys. The sorrows. There is such a risk in being present, but presently I am deep in it and feeling. What more can I do. 

*

I couldn’t imagine my life without my sister, despite our differences. Sisters are sometimes unsettled, chopping, hungering. That burgeoning is okay.  It leads us back to the charge around us, buzzing.

*

If it is not emotion or feeling that weaves us to one another, then why do we tilt so? Why do re-enter day after day in a portrait unthinkable, undistinguishable, unfeeling?  How do we calculate the time? How do we summon the nerve?  How do we read what is there in the air between us yet unseen? One sister feeling, the other not, a set of different charges; a magnet, unset yet settling.

*

There is turbulence, there are winds, there is lightning and thunder and still the rain washes over all. Everyone suffers. This year has taught us that.  Look anywhere. Take this other way of seeing.  This other way of saying and don’t say it.  Move the thought over. 

Leah Umansky is the author of two full length collections, The Barbarous Century, and Domestic Uncertainties among others. She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and is the curator and host of The COUPLET Reading Series in NYC. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in such places as Thrush Poetry Journal, Glass Poetry Journal, The New York Times, POETRY, Guernica, The Bennington Review, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, Rhino, and Pleiades. She can be found at www.leahumansky.com or @leah.umansky on IG.

30 August 2021