Addressing this here even though it's more of a p.s. to my post to bottomfish in his (?) thread ... but it connects also to your ode comments ...

I think the pronoun choices are suggestive of more than has been explored here yet: In opting to make the knives second-person direct addresses, from the title onward, his parents are third-personized. Typically, those who you make into third persons as overhearers or non-present parties (in this case, of course, fittingly accentuating that they are departed), I think it adds to the mixed sense of feeling I get from the poem about the author's emotional heritage from his parents. Direct address ("you") implies the hearer is being engaged more personally than those in third-person - I get the sense that the knives are less of a mystery to the narrator than his parents were, that he understands them and is 'bonded' to them even in a more straightforward manner than with his parents. Or at least I think the pronoun positioning allows for that possibility ...