Just the Right Book Podcast is celebrating Mother's Day with one of Roxanne's favorite Mother's Day poems. In this very special Tidbit, Roxanne reads The Lanyard by Billy Collins.  Be sure to like us on Facebook and join our mailing list to hear more news about Just the Right Book Podcast  The Lanyard by 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-clothes on my forehead,

and then led me out into the air 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-toned 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.   More poetry by Billy Collins: The Rain in Portugal: Poems by Billy Collins  Aimless Love: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins Horoscopes for the Dead by Billy Collins Ballistics by Billy Collins The Trouble with Poetry: And Other Poems by Billy Collins Nine Horses: Poems by Billy Collins Sailing Alone Around the Room: New and Selected Poems by Billy Collins

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