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