Friday Night Poetry

As I was walking by my bookshelf the other day, I noticed a book whose title looked interesting and whose author I may have heard of, but wasn’t sure.

I removed the book, read its title and turned at once to the inside back cover.

There I saw a set of numbers that I recognized as the pages where I had noted a passage or two.

But lo and behold, I had no recollection of the book, its author, story, or the slightest thing about it.

And then I recalled a poem by Billy Collins, an author I know, about an experience that is equally familiar to me.

Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

See Collins live performance at a recent TED conference:

The Lanyard

The other day I was strolling along a street here in Honolulu I chanced upon a strange looking object on the ground. It looked like this.

After some sleuthing, I determined it is the frond of a Norfolk Pine, Araucaria heterophylla, if you recall your Latin. Apparently the tree originated in Australia and now grows throughout the South Pacific. Here in Honolulu it is widely used as a Christmas tree.

As I looked closely at the frond, I was immediately reminded of a lanyard, the multi-colored plastic strands that we used to weave together at the summer camp I went to each year.

It didn’t take long before I also recalled one my favorite Billy Collins’s poems. No wonder, as it is called The Lanyard.

The Lanyard - 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-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.

The poem is best enjoyed if read it out loud. Try to capture the wistful humor that Collins coveys in this reading.



Note: Marks in the Margin will be on Spring Break for a while. Thank you for reading. Meanwhile, I hope you discover new literary gems and enjoy sunny days.