Randall Knife

My father had a Randall knife

My mother gave it to him

When he went off to WWII

To save us all from ruin

If you've ever held a Randall knife

Then you know my father well

If a better blade was ever made

It was probably forged in hell

My father was a good man

A lawyer by his trade

And only once did I ever see

Him misuse the blade

It almost cut his thumb off

When he took it for a tool

The knife was made for darker things

And you could not bend the rules

He let me take it camping once

On a Boy Scout jamboree

And I broke a half an inch off

Trying to stick it in a tree

I hid it from him for a while

But the knife and he were one

He put it in his bottom drawer

Without a hard word one

There it slept and there it stayed

For twenty some odd years

Sort of like Excalibur

Except waiting for a tear

My father died when I was forty

And I couldn't find a way to cry

Not because I didn't love him

Not because he didn't try

I'd cried for every lesser thing

Whiskey, pain and beauty

But he deserved a better tear

And I was not quite ready

So we took his ashed out to sea

And poured `em off the stern

And threw the roses in the wake

Of everything we'd learned

When we got back to the house

They asked me what I wanted

Not the lawbooks not the watch

I need the things he's haunted

My hand burned for the Randall knife

There in the bottom drawer

And I found a tear for my father's life

And all that it stood for