only hurting myself

I don't know what got into me. I started to get hung up on this comment thing, and was thinking mad thoughts like I wasn't going to post anything if people weren't replying. Then I realized I am not writing for this, them, or that. I'm writing for me, not the mother C (comments). So please if you will, pardon all the comment jumble and I promise, to me, it shall never happen again. Although, I am curious as to how many iPods have been through the masses. On current count average is three per person. Damn, I am only average. Maybe I'll put my lil red one in the street with the left overs so I can get a new one and be above average.
Tonight perched high on a cushion in a row of velvet seats I listened to my favorite poet, Billy Collins. He stood in the middle of a beautiful rug on a hardwood floor in an old time theatre with wonderfully painted walls. I was grateful for my balcony seat so I could see the entire rug, the blurry poet, and the tiny glass of water jiggle ever so slightly. I was pleased to hear he would be signing books afterward, because I brought my lanyard for him to sign. Why would I bring a lanyard and not a book? Well, that's easy. Posted below is a snippet of his poem entitled "The Lanyard". Enjoy.
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." ...