Tasha Yar At Her Best*
Pain is a small price
to pay for clarity.
Just ask Tasha, she’s died twice,
so far. But at her worst, she often
felt her best. Crawling
through trenches, phasers
set to kill. A clear target
in the muck. Even her daughter, defying
genetics with her mother’s
blonde bob, disappointed
Picard in every, single way.
Armor and purpose. Family legacy.
But here’s a secret
that Tasha never told anyone:
Her death fantasy (and we all
have one) was to expire by the pool
on a holiday planet, opal sunset.
No phasers or fighting,
not that it matters, she knows
that now. Death brings
clarity far beyond
your pool day, and this time,
she slips through colored panels,
indigo and reds, the fire-pink
of cherry blossoms, and into the deep
and changing sea.
*In “Yesterday’s Enterprise” (Season 3, Episode 15) the ship experiences a temporal rift that results in creating an alternate timeline. Yar is once again alive on the Enterprise, but allegedly dies again on an Enterprise from the past. In “Redemption, Part II,” (Season 5, Episode 1) a Romulan, named Sela, reveals that she is the daughter of Tasha Yar and that her mother was executed years ago when she tried to escape from Sela’s father, who had kept her as a sex slave.
Coming soon in new, book-length manuscript, “To Boldly Go: Poems from the Starship Enterprise.”
First published in Cahoodaloodaling, Issue 27: Joy Sticks, Fall 2018
Shanti Weiland 