Billy Collins' "The Lanyard" is a perfect Mother's Day poem. The narrator reflects on a lanyard , a simple woven bracelet, he made for his mother one year while away at summer camp. His memory was triggered by a simple daily event: he stumbled upon the word "lanyard" while leafing through a dictionary one day amid a flurry of busy activities. He was "ricocheting" off the "blue walls," indicating that his reverie helped him to discover the core of what matters most in life: family and love. Thinking about the lanyard, the narrator seems rueful for not ever being able to truly repay his mother for the selflessness and sacrifices she makes for her children. He lists a litany of maternal gestures from being milked from the breast to being fully fed, clothed, and educated all at her expense. "And I gave her a lanyard," the narrator notes, indicating that nothing he can do could ever repay his mother for her work. Yet any guilt the narrator feels over giving his mother such a simple gift as a lanyard is quickly mitigated by the wisdom that a mother's love is pure and unconditional. The gesture of gratitude and kindness the lanyard represented was more than enough to repay her. As the narrator states, the small gift "would be enough to make us even," (7th stanza). A free verse lyrical poem, "The Lanyard" relies on rich imagery, diction, and rhythm to convey a theme of gratitude and love for one's mother.
             One of the ways the poet conveys the central theme of "The Lanyard" is through evocative imagery. For example, in the first stanza, the narrator uses a curious phrase: "ricocheting slowly," (line 1). Ricocheting is a word that usually refers to a bullet; it connotes a sense of bouncing around or in this case, bouncing off the walls. The narrator is ricocheting "slowly," though, "moving as if underwater." The metaphor of ricocheting off the walls, coupled with the simile of "moving as if underwater," combine to offer the reader insight int...