That they could heave it off its grunting piers
and shim a set of I-beams under it,
wheel and tire enough be brought to bear
to cart it over the yard, into the street,
and after standing still for eighty years
it could keep from shaking itself to pieces,
its frame joints creak and give but not sever
when it’s separated from its own address,
still seems a miracle. But better yet,
despite the WIDE LOAD sash across its breast
that it should glide with such gabled quiet,
like an iceberg through these narrow straits,
or like a head of state borne on a caisson,
towed by a truck with its hazard lights on.
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