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.”