Poetic Reflections

Everday life and everyday sorrow are the materials Tom Nahra shapes into images that illuminate the trajectory of our time on the planet. He celebrates beauty in spirit and form. Mortality looms at our back, as it must for everyone. Failure fuels energy to try again. Hope, there's always hope. And steadfast Christian faith. Here, also, is the trope of bemused bewilderment shared by every immigrant who has not yet learnt to integrate with the brash, loud, rushing pell-mell American world he has stepped into and strives to make comprehensible and a home. There is the loneliness felt by all who leave their country and culture far behind. The emotional sting that is attached to vast distances separating faces loved and remembered. Smells and tastes savored. "What am I?" is a classic immigrant's lament. The poetic perspective echoes life's progression from the optimism of youth to fears, doubts and physical travails as we travel through maturity to old age. Written over a lifetime, Nahra's poetry embraces the world in all its mysteries, contradictions, and enigmas. English is the poet's second language, learnt relatively late when he was already a young adult. The Levant informed his imagination. Cerulean skies, the Mediterranean Sea, the intimacy of a Lebanese Christian family, close-knit in a village life about as remote from the bustle of America as it is possible to be. It is because of his Lebanon birthplace that brings the sea so often into his work. The sea as redemption, as mystery, as wonder and vast grave.