Ode To Patty Sullivan

Who is Patty Sullivan –
       and how did I come to have her dictionary?

My father recalls no one by this name.
My mother dead these now fifteen years.
The book coming to me off their shelf –

(Some friend of a friend who let them
       borrow the book into keeping?)

It has since traveled through at least three states,
       to my home on my desk,
       twenty-five years after it was published and bought.

Could it have been a gift?
What gave Patty S. the impulse to scroll her name
       on the cover’s page?
Does she want her dictionary back?

O, Patty Sullivan,
       I have your dictionary,
       it is a fine book,
       I treat it with care and come to it often.