Address Book 

The leather binding, torn and askew,
is barely joined by brittle pieces of Scotch tape.  
And the names and streets, long since fled 
to a digital cloud of witnesses, 
are more like a graveyard than a town.

Still, the notes that survive atop layers
of correction fluid say something of souls
that were important to me, and thus remain so, 
like the yellowing leaves of a ginkgo tree, 
the ones that stubbornly persist.

Here, in parentheses, are the names
of long-grown children, and there, in brackets, 
of spouses who have darted away.
Here the phone of a climbing friend
who somehow fell out of acquaintance

and no longer speaks to me. (What did I do?)
There a once-prized student, moved on
and out of touch. And others, too many to count,
receded into addiction, dementia, frailty—
or into the distance of fame and riches.

But still, an assembly that I once knew,
and that once knew me, faults and all.
What can I say to this my little book of life,
my memento mori? Thanks for coming, everyone.  
Thanks for resting on this branch while winter comes.