Three Poems by Leah Umansky



About the Moon

“Be reckless,” I tell myself, each time the sun sets,
each time, I watch her fading.  “Be wrecked

by the beauty of the day, the coming of the night.”
“Make happy accidents,” I say, let the wrecked

Enter your home, enter your sky, enter your lonely. I
see my home as an opera, a score; each star, wrecked,

and dying, but in song and beauty; my sky is a wall I write on,
a  portrait of my eye,  of my wanting, and my wrecked

desires. Find me. See me. I am a found object of chaos.
I am a mirror of the sea; together we cradle a dance, wrecked

in darkness and light; my allegiance is to the moonstruck;
those lovers, their heads turned up like flowers, wrecked

on love, despair, joy or beauty; I see them at my fullest, their necks
craning; all those open windows, all their eyes; my brightness, a reckoning.


* 


Fog Sonnet

for Josh Sapan and the River House

Outside, is the white of the day
separated from the morning fog; separated
from the fog of day; I see the squirrel’s hoard;
I see the extending of branch under branch
down, down, down the trunk of the tree, stretching, thinning out
to the head of the river top, its open tongue lapping the cream of sky.
Each branch bending  back, and forward, jutting its fingerprints  into day: I
know better than to separate my joys and fears; they are one of the same. I
try to be careful, balance myself on the thin; so much is out there, 
across the riverbank so much under the fog, it is almost playing with me
—the moist land at the cusp,  the orange leaves; the tall pine overhead. I 
remind myself there are some things we cannot see. There are some things 
we aren’t meant to see.  The river changes every second.  There are ten rivers, 
five rivers, fifteen rivers. There is one river in the white of day, outside.             


*


Quest for Light

after Daniel Buckingham, Sculpture Artist and Professor 

A student has the hardback of a book I’m teaching and I swoon over its cover.  
Then, another asks if I buy books just to look at them, laughing. I am confused 
by her question, to look at them? Then I realize, yes, I do.  After school, I am 
still thinking about her question: as with anything I like to cherish the things
 I love and I think about that cherishing —how akin it is to light, to a quest.
 It is all a curious place.  Did you know the live edge of a plant is the place 
the plant grows from? That is what teaching is like — like casting light on that
edge, nurturing what will come, or not come. Our lives are held in the little
things. What is my Milky Way?  It is so many things, so much light floating
through me. You know, so much sparkles if you notice: a new blue line
on the lower loop of the Park, the frost imprint of snow on the  window, 
and last weekend, a  rainbow hidden in the low line of sky above the trees. 
I cannot make promises; I can only try to, but I know what ordinary happiness is. 
I’ve been edging closer to its light all my life — It is a quest. There is always  
something new that can be said. There is always something new.   


Leah Umansky is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently, Of Tyrant (Word Works Books, 2024.) She earned her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and has curated and hosted COUPLET Reading Series in New York City since 2011. She created the Stay Brave Substack which encourages women-identifying creatives to inspire other women-identifying creatives to stay brave in their creative pursuits. She has published in such places as The New York Times, The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A Day, USA Today, Poetry, and American Poetry Review. She is a writing coach who has taught workshops to all ages at such places as Poetry School London, Poets House, Hudson Valley Writers Center, Memorial Sloan Kettering and elsewhere. She is working on a fourth collection of poems, Ordinary Splendor, on wonder, joy and love. 



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