qarrtsiluni

by Linda Umans

I want my comfort in an orange night
where the heat stays later than you might expect.

I don’t want to dream of coastal living
with a man who would have gotten me drowned.

I want to live in the art world where medicine’s an art.
I want to ride the centrifuge and know the whirling cells.

I am perennial and stand with irises
border of iridescence   reliable as squash.

I would choose biennial as beets as winter wheat
for the appeal of slow   for the drama of the bloom.

I want to be your life preserver but not your life.
I don’t want to leave but love you anyway.

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Linda Umans enjoyed a long teaching career in the NYC public schools. She is a native of Manhattan where she lives, studies, and writes. Recent publications include poems in qarrtsiluni, YB, Terrain.org, The Broome Street Review, The Ghazal Page, Status Hat, Switched-on Gutenberg and a piece in Mr. Beller’s Neighborhood.