The Sharp Edge of Many Blessings

In the top left hand drawer

of my green painted mahogany dresser
is a swiss army knife

bought in 1981
in Zurich Switzerland
on a sunny warm alpine day

the toothpick is missing
and the little saw is gummed up
with sap and other gunk.

The knife is dull, and now,
it is almost solely used as a leather punch
when my belts need tightening.

I had it in my pocket
the day I visited the vatican
and saw the swiss guard

and wondered if they had one
in their pocket too
being swiss and all.

On christmas morning
in 1995, i used it to open
Barbie dolls for my daughter

as she screamed,
"I want to play with them
NOW Daddy!"

Two days before
my grandfather died
he handed me a cigar knife

that belonged to his father
and I almost cried
when he told me

it is the only thing
of his father's
that he ever had.


For my birthday
in 2004, I received
a leatherman

not a cheap
immitation ..
the real mccoy

Christmas morning that year,
I stabbed myself with it
removing a security device from khaki slacks.

I have a scar
on my left hand
about a half-inch long


on 4346 Phillippa Lane
in Randburg South Africa
in the Transvaal Province

I sat for hours
behind the protea garden
under a fat bush

that I thought (rightly?)
was my own personal
dirt and branch castle

carving out branches
one by one
with my swiss army knife

it was a comfortable room
that only I knew
(until the black mamba came)


when Papa died
i sat on my bad
with his father's knife

in my hand
i saw my past
extend back for centuries

opened and closed
i flipped it
a thousand times

but
i never sliced a thing.

When Cameron went camping
I handed him my leatherman
'just in case'

I told him
to be careful

he handed it back
last year
when my mother gave him his own.