The Neighbor's Shakes

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The Neighbor’s Shakes

    

        — for Eddie

For an old builder it's not

the blessing you imagined,


this inability to pinch a pen 

or fit a Philip's-head to the bit, 


but when everything we vise

into our grip becomes, in time,


a tool, some of us could use

a dropped screw or two, set loose at last


to quake in the gold-plated glint 

of all we cannot seem to hold.


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