Does July Remind You of Summer Camp?

I missed Muse Day! I dislike missing Muse Day. I always intend to post on Muse Day....

So, I'm going to post today. :-)

(2008 family reunion)

I've become a Billy Collins fan.
Billy Collins is the author of seven collections of poetry.

He is a Distinguished Professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York, he was Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001 - 2003. He has also served as the Poet Laureate of new York State.

I've taken the following poem from
The Trouble With POETRY and Other Poems,
Random House, New York, 2005



The Lanyard

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale blue walls of this room,
bouncing from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
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 more suddenly into the past ---
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid 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 sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set 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 archaic truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
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.



(My cousin's pond)

Muse Day post - late.
See Carolyn Gail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago
to read all the timely posts! :-)