Ars Poetica: Am I Really Mary Oliver?

for Dante Di Stefano

1.
There are roses on the subway rack:
a stimulus and response project.

2.
How to undrown the self? Feel. Look. See. Gather.

3.
In a Zoom reading. a woman pulls over on the road,
just to read her poem. Attention is joy.

4.
At 59th street, the conductor comes on: pay attention.
Put your phone down. Everyone laughs; I listen.

5.
In the morning, I walk to the station through marigolds,
and the ghost-sunflowers, deadheads really, and I think I want to ask
better questions of the world. You, in your radiant suggestion, what do you want?

The Rain, Life and Other Things

after Tiana and Pádraig

My sister tells me, don’t get caught in the rain; but I don’t mind
a little damp; a little dampening. Stories can start in all sorts of

places, and so many things are possible at once.I mind the sitting,
all the small urgencies, the indoors, and lately all I really want is

movement and walking and simplicity, and to turn off my brain,
all those thoughts, and my wanting. Why is it always seeking

and sifting, liking and striking? It is exhausting to keep up with
everything. Sometimes, I see the pink flowers on the park path

and sometimes, I don’t. A friend texts me that I should take a
break from dating, and I say if I do, then I am nowhere, I am just

a-flutter in the day of my own mind, wondering about the what ifs
and the hows and the whens, and how am I going to meet someone,

(how?) if I focus so much on myself; I am good at it. I feed my soul
what it wants. I am always ravenous.

                                                                          When I am walking,
the pink flowers punctuate the green, and the sky is sick with gray;

rain will come, but I am just putting one foot in front of the other,
and I am not worried. I see that pink and I think about how pink

was never a favorite a color of mine; it's too coated, too thick, full
of suggestion, of implication and of blush. I am thinking of my

two lives, which has come up again, how they are one of the same,
whether I like it or not, but -- I like it. I do. I think about the verbs

that contain my life and how saturated they are; how pink (or piqued.)
I am listening to a poem about verbs. It is exhausting just to listen to

their work, just to step to the thought itself; this life is just exhausting.
It has been a year of physical, mental, emotional, psychological

social, comical, medical, logical, lyrical, stoical, magical, radical,
optical, atypical, typical, historical, methodical,tragical, invisible,

and of classical magnitudes. Classical. Classical. Yes, you have to laugh
at the tragedy of it all; sometimes nothing matters, but the movement

of your mind, your footfalls falling into place; your right before your left;
Don’t get stuck in the rain, says my sister, but, I think,

                                                                      I want to. I look at the quiet
sky, its gray and drab, and the trees are singing in their green, and I am

grateful for their color; I am here, looking at the pink roses I pass as I turn,
and curve back to 72nd Street. The turning point comes when the eye returns,

when the I returns, and here I am looking inward, looking to this poem I
haven’t written yet and the one I am listening to, and I think about where

I belong while trying to ground myself. Then, I come to the trestle,
(or what I like to call ‘the undergrove,’) and begin a text to the poet,

but I stop myself, for there is no immediate need; I mean, I write the text
because I want to, but then I copy it into an email, letting it stretch over time,

and as I pause and sit on the bench outside, I realize nothing is immediate;
nothing needs so much; and as I sit there, relaxing, I put on my favorite

Chris Cornell song, ‘Higher Truth,’ to settle me and when I look
up from my phone, I am suddenly part-witness: there is a chorus line

of ten runners on the bench opposite me, all in workout clothes
stretching in unison, in front of the pink roses, all in sync, like a dance.

It is a public choreography: right ankle over the left knee, twothreefour,
then left ankle over the right twothreefour, I smile and begin to get up

and walk out of the park when I see them stand and reverse, left hand
on the back of the bench, right pulling the right hamstring back,

like a bird. I, too, pull myself back, out of my racing. I look. I see; I
remember my own remembering: look more. And I send that email.

                                            I think to myself, you never regret a walk
and I take a photo of those pink flowers so thirsty for my breath. Hello,

I say to them, and I look up at the sky thinking: there’s a sunset there
somewhere behind those clouds. So many things are possible at once. So

many things are possible.

© Leah Umansky
Published in Bennington Review

Ars Poetica: The Micro

for KC and Queensbound

The world is a tender
place if we see it as such.
It’s hard, hard to see, and
hard to see it as tender-hearted,
or as tending to any thing or any
one really. Last weekend, when
the Q-Train wasn’t running again
in Brooklyn. (Again! I shrieked.) Then,
the macro turned micro, even though
I was so centered on me. There, on the
platform for the shuttle, I saw kindness bloom
An elderly man was lost and I saw an MTA employee,
talking into the man’s phone, tending to his need,
holding it flat in his palm, like a bruised bird, cradling it
gently, and gently saying tell me where he needs to go
and then translate what I say to you, to him. This tendering,
this tending, pulled on my own tethers, and my pout turned
into a smile, a note for a poem, and a tending to my own joy.

© Leah Umansky
Published: WNYC

What If I Never Fell In Love With The World?

after Major Jackson and The Slowdown

Be a person, says my friend Sarah after a meeting
At school; a motto the world should try to take on.
Be a person; it should be a necessity, a basic need
Like shelter, like food, like love. Being a person
Is more than just our morals, values, and our species;
It’s about humanity; it’s about the essentials of our
Kind. Being a person involves beauty, but so many
Of us avert our eyes. I try not to. I applaud it when I
See it. Maybe, it’s the teacher in me, or the poet, but
I try to see the craft of it all – we create who we want
To be, and at the end of the day, each day brings us
Farther into the future, where everything ends, but
Where everything is also happening, and as Brian
Turner says, how beautiful we are in the ruins.

                                      *

There is so much in the world to fall in love with,
And imagine if I never had. Imagine, if I never
Appreciated compliments I’ve received, the embrace
Of a friend, the heft of a lover. Imagine never feeling
The sun on my face on a 75° day and saying, yes;
Thank you. Imagine, the ocean, if I never sought out
Its glimmer-gleam, never felt its foamy kiss at my ankle,
Its eternal lapping, its soundscape of everlong. Say,
I never appreciated the starry night, the crawl of
Peach and lilac across the sky at twilight, or the sheer
Fragrance of lilacs on the Park path; Sure, you could
Still love the world, but it would be a love halved.

                                      *

If you look and see nothing, you must simply look harder.
Everything is a miracle if we’re open to receiving it.
I work hard at the love I give, at how I shield my
Eyes and heart. Nothing gold can stay, but there is
Beauty; there is much to imagine out of our reach.
The other day, I told a friend at a reading that she
Looked beautiful, and when I saw her a few days later,
She looked at me insisting, No. No, you don’t understand
I didn’t. I smiled saying, well, I think so, and she replied,
I don’t have that said to me often. Too often, we don’t tell
People why they make us smile, the why is important,
And last week, in Central Park with students, watching
The solar eclipse, there was so much apathy in their faces,
But I, I was thrilled. I was enamored in darkness; coolness
Rolled over me, like love or nightfall, and when I took
My eyes away from the glare of sun, I saw the lampposts
Each coming on, one by one, small moons of another planet.

                                      *

There are so many quiet spaces. There are so many
Spaces to stand and pause. I try to make myself aware
Of them. There is so much to love. And after, at the end of
Uncle Vanya the other night, when Vanya cries out,
What can we do?, in sadness, in grief, Sonia consoles him.
We shall live, she says. And of course, we shall. Of course.
I choose love, and I choose to love. And my boyfriend is right.
I talk to everyone, even strangers, especially strangers. I
Smile when I can. I compliment dogs. I’m not sure that
Anything is a coincidence anymore. Everything matters, for
It strings us to one another. The figuring takes work,
That making of meaning takes work, but I can’t imagine it
Another way. Some people long to be someone else,
But I am happy with who I am; Yes, I want the world
To be different. Yes, I can be different, but what
Can we do to love more? We can live.

© Leah Umansky