Lunch with Mary

Wendell Hawken | Poetry

Plates awash in leftover jambalaya, We drag chairs to face October’s thin sun,

Warmth quieted to blue jay squalls.

Fox-tail tassels shine

With tiny flying things you only see

If you sit still.

A cricket crawls onto my set-down plate,

Works her mandible way across

What sauce I left.

By now she has set her rows of eggs.

The male has died.

Mary sighs,

Says she might re-marry,

Hands me her sauce-streaked plate

To set down for the cricket.

Art credit: "Girl in a Green Blouse" (1917) by Amadeo Modigliani via the National Gallery of Art