Hello, Poetry Friend
The only bad thing about learning Billy Collins' poem "The Lanyard" by heart is that now I can read it without laughing. And for years I have enjoyed laughing my way through this poem, especially around Mother’s Day.
If this were merely a good poem, it would end earlier, before “And here, I wish to say to her now”. But it goes on for another seven lines and becomes a great poem.
The Lanyard
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.
–Billy Collins
One of my favorite novels of late is Taylor Jenkins Reid's Daisy Jones & The Six, about a fictional '70s rock band. The book has been made into an Amazon series, and one Thursday morning, while listening to the song "Look at Us Now (Honeycomb)," I knew that, for me, the song is about more than the tumultuous relationship between Daisy and Billy. The song is also a description of my journey of motherhood.
In honor of Mother's Day, I decided to write my own version of Collins’ poem, using this song. Several of my lines are right out of the song (those are italicized below and do not in appear in order). Thank you, kind writers, for helping me take a better, clearer, more sober look at us now.
Honeycomb The other day I was driving recklessly through the dark streets of our town, turning without a blinker, waiting for stop signs to turn green, when the algorithms gifted me the song "Look at Us Now," aka "Honeycomb." No guitar riff from any rock band, real or imagined, could steer me into the truth more suddenly – the truth that the song I turn up is not that kind of a love story, but a love story of honeycomb, our family. I have touched smooth, hole-filled honeycomb, have lugged it into our garden for a border and prayed we could get it all back, bury our regrets in this shallow soil start a new life surrounded by this honeycomb. We let them down as parents and offered only this honeycomb. We talked redemption over breakfast, preached salvation every Sunday — meant it, really meant it — but we can make a good thing bad and sing in destructive harmony about our solid home, our honeycomb. The guitar sped up fast, the drums kicked in, and the keyboardist banged out chords: Here is your honecomb, they yelled, and the bass wailed along: Do you know who you are? We unraveled a long time ago. We lost and we couldn't let it go. But how, we asked, can a honeycomb unravel? And how, we ask now, How did we get here? How do we get out? You've been crying in the dark all of us – about our honeycomb – this thing we've been doin ain't workin out, admit it to me. We used to be something to see. – Megan Willome (with a little help from Blake Mills, Jason Boesal, Stephony Smith, Jonathan Rice, and Marcus Mumford)
Poetry Journal
Read Billy Collins’ poem. What keeps it from being trite?
Read it again, aloud. I dare you not to laugh.
Do you have a favorite poem about mothers?
The challenge, should you accept it, rewrite Collins’ poem but keep its format. If you like, email me what you write.
Happy poeming!
Megan