Books and Love: Two Poems

I mentioned to a correspondent that when wifey is away, her side of the bed turns into a mountain of books, and that when she returns the mountain moves to the floor. Her response took the form of a poem:

TREADING TIME

While you are gone God-knows-where
I become a hairy-palmed bibliomaniac
Peering over my unsteady stack of books
The librarian asks if I’m a teacher.
No. Just learning,
Treading time till you come back.

The floor on my side of the bed
Is crowded with books stacked
Like mines. They are there to fill
The spaces you make in me
Taking your leave.

Not bad, I'd say; and better than this effort of mine from Autumn, 1981, which it reminded me of:

ALONE AGAIN

Your leaving has removed whole shelves of my life;
Volumes we have written together are present now
Like the empty spaces of my soul
As it absorbs the fact of your passing.