When I went off to college in 1969,
my mother gave me a Webster’s
New World Collegiate Dictionary
and the money to buy a typewriter.
I chose an Olivetti, lightweight
and portable. (Believe it or not,
along with shooting a rifle
and close order drill, the Marines
taught me to type with all ten fingers.)

When I went to graduate school
in Chicago eight years later,
my mother bought me a briefcase
and a winter coat for the Windy City.

The coat kept me from freezing
to death through two of the coldest
and snowiest winters I’ve ever
encountered, and I wore it for years
till it finally became so threadbare
my wife insisted I buy a new one.

The typewriter lasted a dozen years
through college and grad school, years
of correspondence, dozens of poems
typed and sent out and rejected
and typed again and sent out again,
and every now and then “a cigar.”
I even typed my first memoir
on it, draft after draft after draft
for two long years. Hundreds
of pages. A lot of White-Out.

The briefcase lasted even longer.
I still have it, and it still works,
though at 76 and mostly retired,
I’ve got little need for it now.

And I certainly haven’t used that
ancient dictionary, now so out-of-date
that usages have changed, and words
that didn’t exist fifty-five years ago
are part of everyday vocabulary.
Who needs a dictionary when you’ve
got the internet and Spell Check?
But I keep mine anyway. I haven’t
opened it in years, but I’ll never
let it go. My mother gave it to me.