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This is the Tom Hartman program.

This is the Tom Hartman program. I am Jeffrey Smith, honored to be with you today.

What are we thankful for? Here's my wife's favorite poem.

It is The Lanyard by Billy Collas.

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 and a camp. By a deep Adirondac 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 do 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 how to walk and swim and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

...