Rhyme Scheme / Hannah Pulley

A Thank-You Note

By Michael Ryan

For John Skoyles

My daughter made drawings with the pens you sent,

line drawings that suggest the things they represent,

different from any drawings she — at ten — had done,

closer to real art, implying what the mind fills in.

For her mother she made a flower fragile on its stem;

for me, a lion, calm, contained, but not a handsome one.

She drew a lion for me once before, on a get-well card,

and wrote I must be brave even when it’s hard.

Such love is healing — as you know, my friend,

especially when it comes unbidden from our children

despite the flaws they see so vividly in us.

Who can love you as your child does?

Your son so ill, the brutal chemo, his looming loss

owning you now — yet you would be this generous

to think of my child. With the pens you sent

she has made I hope a healing instrument.

Born in 1946, Michael Ryan is an American poet, memoirist, and professor of literature and creative writing at University of California, Irvine. His poem, The Thank-You Note, he thanks the giver of a small gift—a pack of pens— by illustrating how much of a positive and uplifting effect the small gift has in the hands and imagination of a child. This giver is implied to be a parent of a child with cancer, and this small effort becomes even larger when the enormity of struggle the giver faces is considered.

The poem’s two stanzas have a AABCDBEE  FFGGHHII rhyme scheme, where Ryan exclusively uses end rhyme. The poem is formatted with standard punctuation within and at the ends of lines in order to give the appearance of an actual thank-you note, written in complete sentences. The first stanza rhymes only the first two and last two lines, two sets of perfect rhymes, with four unmatched lines in between.  The loose structure is more conversational and introduces what the author really intends to discuss: the clinging, unconditional love and closeness a child shares with a parent. In the second stanza, this closeness is mirrored in the four couplets. While the second and fourth are closer to perfect rhyme, this predictable pattern emphasizes the hope and happiness the recipient brings to the author, and reaches out to give some of this hope in return to the giver of the gift.

Cited:

Ryan, Michael. "A Thank-You Note." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, 1 July 2013. Web. 10 Oct. 2014. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/246016>.