The New Address Book
Sonnet for a Wife
You’d noticed the old one peeling apart,
its pages curling, grimy from my thumb,
crossings through for the dead and disappeared,
the friends moving home – or into a home.
So you’ve bought me this one, untenanted
still: tangerine leather, a slim gold pen,
gilt-edged pages A to Z, none tainted
yet by termination, spick their whole span.
But it’s tempting to leave them as they are,
not start my very likely final list
too soon; extend my ghosts another year,
since none, I know of, yet sued for release.
Why, then, bring on the future quite so fast,
not dwell awhile with ruins from my past?
