The Tinkerer: Biography

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The Tinkerer: Biography


        Beginning: 1990-something 

        Terminus: He'll get around to it


Neither skilled nor unskilled. Not so much a lack 

of love for things finished but an eye 

for too much that needs finishing. He knows

what he builds will not stay forever

built, but does not find the hardware

of that truth sufficient to hold 

back his hammer. When he hears 

the song sundered, the grammar 

lilting left, his tune is troubled. He is deaf 

enough both not to know what went awry 

and to try. Regarding this and that, 

here and there, the split hairs 

of what and why, he does not find

them irreparably sundered. Why not me?

he often wonders. Sometimes he weeps

when he works. Laughter, too. 

The pointed rage of a dropped screw. 

No one calls it craftsmanship but he gets by  

with good. The further beyond 

his means the need the more

piercing his itch to open the hood

and have a halting say. No matter how awkward

the angle he will not throw it away:

This is what clutters the rag-tag shed

of his life and may, given a little

time, make him something.


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