Swedish steel, drop-forged, lighter than many
the hickory handle elegant, its long honey-veined grain
polished with use, its balance perfect.
A homemade leather sheath for the head, like those
hoods fastened over the heads of
Persian hunting falcons, secreting the fierce
intent of the blade’s naked gaze…

In awe, the awkward boy I was back then
made a sentence: How can such a thing of beauty
be? I did not know what I was saying.
My father laughed and said: So you want to be a poet?
I did not know what he was saying.
But towards the end of his life again I admired his axe
and he said, eyes shining: Well, it’s yours, chum.

It came to me with my grandfather’s machete
an altogether different kind of implement.
He’d been an engineer, able to turn things to other uses.
Handmade from the leaf-spring of
a Model A Ford’s suspension, the ball-peen hammer
marks prominent still on the steel, its edge
jagged, savage, its handle scarred with spokeshave
and rasp strokes, just two staves of mahogany
held by hammered brass rivets
and tightly whip-bound with waxed string.

The thick leather scabbard promised exactly
what would be unsheathed into my hand. I’d draw it
forth, feel its weight. A brute of a thing, its heft
and heave well-nigh unstoppable.
A masher a smasher more than a slasher…
Yet that rough-tempered blade when honed to cold
brightness was really something to see.
Though it was not at all beautiful
through hard use in time I learned its lesson
that beauty’s not the only thing to be.