The Lanyard

Photograph by J.R. Eike


"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.


Billy Collins

Posted over on NPR.org