For Uncle, My Mother's Knife

We're farmfolk and this is the only knife my mother used for as long as I knew her, fifty-four years or so, from cutting the head off a rooster, skinning a rabbit, turning a pig into ham, bacon and sausage, peeling potatoes, dicing onions, slicing bread .... My father kept it sharp with a file.

It's an Okapi, German-made, of plain carbon steel, and likely a lot older than I am.

The Weddings Rings Were Gold

Gold, too, the chains that bound our youth. Why didn't you see them?

Open the window for the May breeze. We started for one place and to another life takes us.