poem "Shadows"

This poem first appeared  quite a few years ago in the chapbook, Polarities.

SHADOWS

Irrational fears of dark corners
plagued me on long-ago nights.
"Let me stay up til ten.
til you go to bed,
and then I will be quite all right.

"Read me just one more chapter
but not the one about bears,
for the old coat that hangs
on a peg by the door
may be just a coat, but it scares."

These days the darkness is welcome,
needed for resting the eyes,
and the pillow is soft
at the end of the day,
but sometimes there comes a surprise:

A trip to a faraway country,
an interlude back in the past,
where the people who left
for the shadowy world
return from the darkness at last.

The psyche becomes a home movie
that lets me revisit old friends.
They speak and they smile
but just for a while.
Too soon the home video ends.

The visitors vanish at daybreak.
The sunlight too rapidly brings
a return to today
where I feel so alone,
and so badly missing past things.

(c) Ruth Latta, 2020

"A Blakean Button".

This poem was published in Canadian Stories magazine and again in my chapbook How to Remember. It's about a button I found that reminded me of  a passage from William Blake's writing.

BLAKEAN BUTTON

"What," it will be questioned, "when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc  of fire somewhat like a guinea?"

"Oh, no, no. I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord Almighty.'"

From The Book of Thel, by William Blake, 1789

A round disk of silver with petal design -
so what does this button suggest?
Just a flower in metal, the size of a dime,
to decorate somebody's chest?

Look closely, you'll notice a sunflower, styled.
Its intricate pattern is plain,
hypnotically whirling to dazzle a child
who may lack the words to explain.

This flower won't wither and die in the fall.
It outlasted the garment it graced.
Perhaps it endured to puzzle us all
as we think about time and of space.

Does the rising sun seem like a coin in the hand,
like a loonie, or guinea of gold?
To Blake, the sun seemed like a bright angel band
that sang praises in stories of old.

This silvery button the size of a dime
which sparkles like sun upon snow,
can stir thoughts of worlds far beyond space and time,
where fields of tall sunflowers grow.

(c) Ruth Latta, 2020

"Sometimes Crime Pays" - Finalist in Capital Crimewriter's contest, 2020

Congratulations to the Finalists on this year’s Capital Crime Writers short story contest, Audrey Jessup Award.

The top five finalists, in no particular order are:

• A Confidential Donation – Kevin Coleman
• Sometimes Crime Pays – Ruth Latta
• I Smell a Mystery – Adrienne Stevenson
• The Perseids – Joe Sornberger
• Midnight at Rocky’s – Wynn Quon

Normally the winners would be announced at our end of year dinner in June. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 and the need to maintain physical distancing, the final results will be emailed to all entrants, as well as posted on this website and the Capital Crime Writers’ Facebook page on June 10.

Poem: A Country Walk

Today, April 22, 2020, it's very cold in Ottawa and we have a new sprinkling of snow on everything.  I can't wait until the weather gets warmer and  Covid-19 has calmed down, and hope that the day will come when we can take a country walk again.




A COUNTRY WALK

by Ruth Latta


Come with me where light depends
on sailing clouds and sunglass lens,
a place where peace and motion blend
as if time’s passage we suspend.

So silently on threadlike legs
a spider strolls around tent pegs.
A bird with fragile feathered head
comes bright-eyed, near, in hope of bread.

In air of pine and curing hay
some yellow-flowered plants display
their pods, pale green, a heavy load.
A brush, a touch, and they explode.

T'was Brillig, Honey

Zephyr me to Samarkand
or maybe to Xanadu.
Raven me to Innisfree.
Be gregarious you.

Flambe me with jubilance.
Spray me with oleander.
Hypnotise me with your pulse
as we forever wander.

Be my knight, my hero.
Don't quit me in a huff.
Braid your verdant yabbadabbadoo
and make me really chuffed,

Persuade my alabaster limbs
with your quintessential refrain.
If you'll be my sweet william,
I'll be your sweet lorraine.

(c) Ruth Latta, 2020

Poem "Movies at the Mayfair"

This poem appeared in The Banister, an anthology

MOVIES AT THE MAYFAIR

(A Homage to Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to a Village Movie Theatre.”)

One winter afternoon we went to see
this year’s “Best Picture”.

The huge theatre complex was Bedlam.
Lights pulsated. Music pounded.
We were trapped in a blend of
video arcade, rock concert
and fast food restaurant.

To see our film we climbed stairs,
more stairs, then entered a cavern of bleachers
ski-sloping sharply to the screen.
Aloft with the gods, in darkness,
I thought of the washroom, a million miles away.

“Come my love,” I said.
“I can’t do this. Let’s wait til it comes to the Mayfair.”

When we go to the Mayfair, a retro theatre
over eighty years old, we stroll along a busy street
past shops and restaurants.  In the lobby we join the queue
of students, cinema buffs and seniors.
Once inside, we pick up a community paper
or buy a used movie poster, like the one from Maudie
on the wall above my desk.

Here we came forty years ago as newlyweds
before there were VHS or DVD players,
let alone Netflix.
Nestled together with popcorn and coffee
we watched movies
we missed in the sad years before we met.

Now we recapture the way we were
and feel young again.
We look up at the cast iron fake balconies
where, over the years,
various faces have peered down on us,
like the cardboard cut-out bear,
a slightly sinister marionette
and a stuffed rodent.

The stage curtains are pulled back
and we watch ads for local businesses
and photos of the theatre
from the days when streetcars ran past it.

When the Mayfair was new,
the real-life protagonist of a novel I wrote
may have come by streetcar with her husband
to see King Kong, Duck Soup 
or Garbo in Queen Christina.

Here, when we saw Il Postino
and, more recently, Neruda,
I remembered Pablo Neruda’s poem
about the village movie theatre.

“Old movies,” he wrote, “are second-hand dreams.
...We will dream all the dreams.”

Today's poem - "A Star is Borne"

I included this poem in "How We Flushed Fluffy", a chapbook of humorous verse.

A STAR IS BORNE

When Liza starred as Sally Bowles
in fishnet stockings full of holes,
her long green nails a sight to see.
she was just what I longed to be.

In school I played a dowager
and though I had some fun with her,
that role did not fulfil my dreams;
I longed to sing with the Supremes.

When Tina Turner struts her stuff
in mini-skirts that flash enough,
and Dolly flaunts her ample charms
while singing "Safe in Jesus' Arms",

I pray that in a future life,
I will not be a mere housewife
but have a chance to shine my light,
at least on Karioke night.

(c) Ruth Latta, 2020

Today's Poem: "Driving with Dolly"

Another oldie of mine, first published in the chapbook, How We Flushed Fluffy and other poems, a combined publication effort with another poet, the late Valerie Simmons. The quotes are from songs recorded by Dolly Parton.


DRIVING WITH DOLLY

We glide the miles, we float along
with Dolly and her sweet refrain.
The wind, the birds, combine in song.
We hear the hum of passing train.

The oatfield's dotted with milkweed,
"Wayfaring Stranger" - this we know.
White parachutes on every seed
for "travelling through this world of woe."

The bales of hay look fresh and sweet.
"The crickets sing in fields nearby"
a golden great expanse of wheat
beneath a hazy summer sky.

Our troubles we have quite forgot.
We float with Dolly and her choir.
"They grew into a true love knot
And the rose it wound around the briar."

"We'll meet upon God's golden shore" -
with luck, not for a little while!
This earthly bliss - who'd ask for more
As Dolly sings each passing mile.

(c) Ruth Latta, 2020

This Visible Worm

"This Visible Worm" is one of my favourites. I wrote it years ago after seeing the movie Dangerous Minds, in which a teacher asked her students to take the Dylan/Dylan challenge; that is, to find the common elements in the works of Dylan Thomas and Bob Dylan.

I decided to set myself the "William Willie challenge." This poem first appeared in the British literary magazine, Magma, way back in 2003


THIS VISIBLE WORM
a homage to William Blake and Willie Nelson

She isn't the ramblin' kind,
but a bloom from a pretty rose tree,
and she gave all her love to this visible worm
and made a good man out of me.

The first time I saw her sweet face,
 I felt clean and as pure as a lamb,
yet strong as a tyger and brave as a sweep
for she's made me the man that I am.

To buy her the things that she needs
I will work graveyard shift at the mill.
No matter how dark and satanic the toil
I'll all of her wishes fulfill.

And on our days off we will stroll,
through the echoing woods hand in hand.
Our songs we'll combine in the sweet Georgia pine
a pleasant and green forest land.

(c) Ruth Latta, 2003, 2020

Two poems

Prior to the pandemic, I was a volunteer facilitator of the writers' group at the Emerald Plaza library here in Ottawa. Although the group is on the back burner indefinitely, I know that members are writing.  I am too, working on a sequel to Votes, Love and War.

Over the past forty years I've had a great many poems published in literary and other magazines. I've toyed with the idea of collecting them in book form someday - don't know when.  Although I retain the copyright to these poems, they are ineligible for future publication in magazines and future entry in contests because they have already been published.

"So why not put some of them on your blog?" I asked myself.

Here are two:

"How do I love you?" was published in Volume 12 of Harpweaver, the literary magazine of Brock University.  It was written to my husband one Valentine's Day and is a homage to Elizabeth Barrett Browning's sonnet, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."

HOW DO I LOVE YOU?|

How do I love you? I'll enumerate:
I love you for your scientific mind,
although it means that I may chance to find
some fungi samples on the fridge's grate.
And thinking back to our initial date,
was it not Star Wars that, so very kind,
you thought of, so that we could both unwind?
(And I kept down the popcorn that I ate.)

I love you for the way you persevered
as Igor to a dreadful Frankenstein
Though some of your department heads were weird
with skill you managed them and did not whine.
With  kindness and with passion you have cheered
my life, and I am glad that you are mine.

 (c) Ruth Latta, 2020

***


The following poem was published in 1997 in Of Unicorns and Space Stations, Volume 3, Number 4, a Utah publication

SHE DREAMED SHE COULD FLY

She dreamed she could fly
while others lay sleeping.
In her white nightgown,
out to the fields
where foxes snuggle in their lairs,
where frogs chirp a rhythm
in the dark, cool pond,
where slowly, imperceptibly
in millimeters
buds grow into apple-green leaves.

A white garden of trilliums
between the birches
gaze up at the stars.

She dreamed that as she flew over
her toes just brushed the tips
of the dewy grass
and that she could smell
the wild cherry tree
raise up its spiky florets
to the moon.

(c) Ruth Latta, 2020