Bof. *

It's 3 am. I'm sprawled in a rather unladylike position on the couch. While you were sleeping is playing in front of me. The woman I'm supposed to be taking care of is snoring on the couch next to me.
And I'm sitting here wondering.
Life feels so unpoetic sometimes.
Sometimes it's downright depressing.
And sometimes I stop and think, this is not what I signed up for. This is not what I thought it would be.
Some people seem to see life in such a poetic way.
Paradise springs up from beneath their feet
Wherever they walk
Beauty is born there.

Sometimes I think that's why I like movies.
For some reason, the person around whom the story revolves is deemed important
Music is chosen, lines are written, to make sure proper due is given their story
If my life were like a movie,
Everyone would understand my motives. I would be the heroine, with whom each watcher wants to laugh, to cry, to talk, to feel.
Parts of my life become symbols, full of meaning, important to those who understand them.
I like when seemingly insignificant things or people become important
And everyone can suddenly see the beauty there.

My roommate shared a poem with me tonight, just before I left for work.
And I like it a lot.
And I think it's a good example of what I'm trying to say.
So here you go:


THE LANYARD

The other day as I was ricocheting slowly
off the pale 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 sickroom,
lifted teaspoons of medicine to my lips,
set 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 archaic truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hands,
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]

Cute, huh? Who'da thunk someone could write such a poem about something as random and usually unnoticed as a lanyard? 
On a random note, the woman next to me just farted.
Ah, life.

*In explanation of the post title, "bof" is a French word. Well, more of a sound than a word. Made with a gust of wind pushed forcefully out of one's mouth. It's used to say, "well, there goes that."