How do you make God laugh?
Make a plan.
This has got to be one of my favorite poems
The Lanyard
The other day as I was ricocheting slowly off the 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 sick room,
Lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
Set cold facecloths on my forehead 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-toned 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."
by Billy Collins
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whiteymcblack's journal
curious
