Neither Dad Nor Jethro Gibbs

Originally posted 10/26/2010, originally titled “Thirty Mescalero Men.”

My father
gave me 
my first knife
when I was six.

A man’s 
only half a man
without a knife, 
he told me then.

On a TV show
the tough but fair Marine
schools his team
on his Rules.  

Rule Number Nine,
he reminds them, is 
“Never go anywhere
without a knife,”  

which is
something
my father
would have said.

At fifty four I keep a box 
of more than sixty knives
under my bed
and never leave the house without one.

Some of the knives I carry
are old — I still have
my first, which was old
when I got it — 

but some are new,
and I cannot say
I’ll never buy another
or stop adding to the armory.

By all the rules 
and lessons I have learned
I am at least 
thirty men,

but I feel certain that neither Dad
nor Jethro Gibbs
would believe 
I’m any of them.