"From our Mother Mary Matchbox" & “On a Night Like This?:" Two Poems

From our Mother Mary Matchbox

Left with burnt tipped
sticks you forget to throw away

I’m lighting incense 
to encourage a wasp to leave.

How epic, to strike a match
from our Mother Mary matchbox that we refill 
with cheap matches from Cost-Savers.

The wasp is not happy with the smoke
caught behind the closed porthole
beside the wide open door.
“Be easy”

Do you remember the cricket who
took to the sea in the crease of your pant leg?
A lone sailor’s chirp
caught in conversation over the phone.


***


On a Night Like This?

How can the man walk bare-chested?
— my mother asks, in my own tone —

	The metal walkway
	leading to the dock
	is slick with the damp,
	early night’s air.
	
	Each mast pointing 
to a sky with no moon.
	I follow Seagull’s white splats
	and rattling halyards
	

pulled
by the splotchy tattoo stretching across
the far ends of his overhung belly.