I took all the dull knives out of the drawer,
laid them at your right hand. Your left
held the steel rod, knowledge learned
from the wife you once had: how
to put an edge on a simple tool
so it cut deeper, with less effort.
She was self-taught, you said,
but a master chef. The sharpener
must be made of harder stuff than the knives,
and this is the angle: slide the worn blade
down the path again and again,
one side, then the other, scrape
metal on metal until it can
part the skin of the tenderest fruit,
cleanly, leaving no bruise,
red cheeks of tomatoes falling away
from the stem where they once joined,
the heart of the onion opened into tears,
the air sharp with the cold, metallic tang
of a lesson painfully learned.