Poems and other writing

The first hint, the thinnest clue, was the smell of smoke.
Focus shifts, and the whole class turns to watch
the shop teacher catch the scent of burning wood.
He sniffs the air, nostrils flaring, rises to his feet
and mutters cusses, blaming all and blaming none,
as he races past saws and lathes, past hammers and nails.

Students, unsure whether to follow, drum fingernails
on shop tables. But growing with the now thickened smoke are insistent, incessant bells of metallic warning, and none wait now. Elsewhere students check their watches
and file out of school, but in the shop panicked feet
pound out anarchy, clambering over the wood.

Their coffee tables and gun racks never would
be varnished and carted home, for past the boxes of nails
and stacks of pine, flames climbed several feet
up the wall. Somewhere within the acrid smoke
curses and a fire extinguisher honk. No one watches
from door or window to see if he emerges. None.

Minutes pass. The shop teacher hears none
of the sirens. Dropping the useless tank, he breathes in wood
as gas, an alchemy of ash and pitch. He stands watch
now, cornered by flame, just beyond the nails
and hardware bins. He hears above him in the smoke
the crack of roofbeams. He stares blankly at his inert feet.

Heat like the hand of a merciless god takes his feet
from under him. Fire ignites cans of varnish. None
of this can be salvaged, he thinks. The indifferent gods of smoke
and fire will take all. His flesh, like the costly hardwoods,
like the stores of mahogany and walnut, will burn brightly. The nails
in the projects will emerge from the sifted ashes, like his ring and watch.

Men soak nearby rooftops, contain the fire and watch
for embers that float skyward. No heroic feat
can save the shop. Or the teacher. "Hard as nails,
he was," the fireside eulogy begins in earnest. "None
of that touchy-feely teaching from that man. Wood
was what he loved." A fireman lights up a smoke.