Day Thirty Eight- 2/7/11 Listen to a New Poem

Day Thirty Eight: 2/7/11
New Thing: Listen to a New Poem that was Recommended to me by a Friend     
Inspiration: Bill Trub, Dean Anthony Pompa
Cost: $0
Time: Less then five minuets
Bottom Line: It is so rare that a poem can make me laugh and cry.

Poet Billy Collins

Reflection: Today I received a true gift from a college friend of mine, Bill Trub. He sent me a several other mothers that he knows a poem written by Billy Collins call "The Lanyard" (which is written below). Unbeknownst to Bill, my mentor, Dean Anthony Pompa shared another poem with me just a month ago by the same poet called, "On Turning Ten." I have fallen in love with these two poems and have decided that Collins is my new favorite poet. He has a way of capturing childhood experiences and feeling without the normal sappy sentimentality, but still retaining the sweetness and beauty that it holds. He is just dead on.

The other thing that I love about both of these poems are the people who recommended them to me. Bill is truly one of the funniest people I know and he is also a fantastic poet and writer. He wrote a short story in college that I have saved ever since and brings me to tears when ever I have read it. And Tony has been an amazing mentor and friend to me. I find him to be a kindred spirit and someone I can go to for honest advice and guidance. That is a true gift.

So, my new thing of the day was to listen to the poet Collins read this "new-to-me" poem in his own words. Enjoy.

 

The Lanyard - Billy Collins
The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.