[captioning made possible by kcet public television] >> billy collins taught college english in the bronxfore he became a bestselling poet-- one of the few whose books have sold over 200,000 copies, thanks to poems such as this one. >> the other day 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 face-cloths