Sample Poems by Nina Tassi

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On the Beach

Sunburst of white light
sends glory from sky to sea,
shimmers across the horizon,
waits for the tides to take it up
and sail on crests of waves to shore.

In the sky four horsemen gallop
amid throngs of billowy white,
appearing, disappearing.

A lone horsewoman canters
on the beach, reins held lightly,
horse and woman making shadows
as they go, hooves leaving a path
of dark wedges in the sand.

She rides alongside a sandy ridge
lined with palm trees, branches
fanned and bent by ocean winds,
bent westward, away from the sea.

Shadows of horse and woman
merge, become a speck, soon gone;
palm trees sway, leaves laced with light.

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Lover's Plea

Please, my darling, take me
to an island where only sea and sky
partake of us, encompass us, where only
the whitest of birds soar and dip around us.

There, beneath palm trees stretched high
with aching for the sun, as you reach for me,
the entire sky will stop to wonder at my love
for you, and the waves will rise and rise and rise.

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Reflections

Evoke a new reality:
sun, sky, mountains come
to meet on the surface of the sea,
mirrors yet more than mirrors
gathered to call to us
of dreams we pull up from the deep,
magical, entrancing. . .
speaking of what we yearn for
but cannot have, except
momentarily perhaps,
for the sky and sun held by the sea
offer promises, entice us to reveries
of what we never knew
yet somehow recognize
as belonging to us deeply;
we are comforted fleetingly.

Reflections appear
and disappear with the tides,
waver between the real and unreal,
coax us into new dimensions,
words murmuring on the water,
lured up from the depths
to show us what we ache to hold,
to cradle, to be entwined with,
but cannot see and shape,
close to our touch but ungraspable.

Like childhood lullabies,
reflections cradled on the sea
chase away the darkness and promise
to hold and keep every wavering
vision still and true, softly
swaying mountains swathed in clouds.

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Birthday Tulips

Rapture today
painted bright yellow.

Tulips sway in bliss,
faces open to midday sun.

Tiny horses on my vase
race in circles, ecstatic
at this treasure.

Stay merry, my luscious ones,
don't droop and wither yet.

Bloom on, revel in the light,
dance a little jig with me.

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Old Salem

They kept me corked up
a hundred and fifty years-
can you beat that?

An earnest little lad,
I slid into the bottle
with the ship's beams
folded down flat and compressed.
Hitch and pull a few strings,
they said. You'll be out in a jiffy.

Happy to help out,
I could see myself
back in the sun again,
unfurling sails to the sky,
basking in their pleased beams.

Dirty damned mean tricksters!
Fifty years it took me
before I realized
there was no getting out.

My beard grew grizzled in there.
Shoulders hunched, guts bunched
one on top of the other,
slip of a boy turned stump of a man.

All those bleary years
caught in that rigging,
cobwebbed on the shelf,
all those damned years,
I should've been out to sea.

All those years,
I should've been out to sea,
manning my own ship,
sailing the bright blue waters.