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On Your Wooden Anniversary
Written December 1977

 

To a friend with whom I'd graduated from college eight years before (she was now married and had a 15-month-old son)

 
Your first full quinquennium now is complete:
     five years you and Bruce have been wed.
In snowy Wisconsin, the cards (those repeat
     congratulatories) are read.

Of wood — so says the tradition — should be
     your fifth-anniversary gift.
But what should I give you?  A beanpole?  One ski?
     An orange crate?  You’d surely be miffed.

And if I chose furniture, still I’d have failed.
     A sideboard?  A desk from the Coast?
A hat-rack?  They’d all be too big to be mailed
     to Meadowood Drive parcel post.

But Fortune is smiling!  Today I have found
    a figure whose face is of wood,
A face that is clearly a portrait of me!  ’Twill astound,
     ’twill thrill you, a likeness so good.

This figure has more than merely its face
     to be recommended and praised:
With cables, it moves!  Doesn’t stay in one place!
     Yes, Brian will be quite amazed.

Through this humble gift, this self-portrait, I say
     to you and your husband and son:
May all of you smile at least five times a day,
     laugh twice, and in living have fun.


The toy looked something like this.  My friend replied:

“Thank you for the poem and for the marionette (which isn’t a very good likeness — it doesn’t even have glasses!)  Brian loves the marionette, and tries to make it walk, saying ‘Walk, walk. Walk, walk.’  Unfortunately, he is too short (30½ inches tall), at least this month.”

 

TBT

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