Oh, my Hayes (Round Two)

I walked by a second time.
They are tearing down my elementary school.
I don't know where the first poem is at the moment.
________

The destruction of the school I understand-
but the death of a book?
It was turned away from me
tilted off of a large piece of stone
or maybe a piece of the school.
But it looked like John Adams on the cover,
his pages waiting to be turned
not from sticky storms
or raw winds
but by gentle hands
eager for its words.
The ISBN scraped and torn,
the year unknown.
I wanted to crawl under
the wimpy temporary fence
and fetch it for keepsake.
Instead I kept walking
away, toward the future-
another page turned.

I stopped again
in front of the back doors
and remembered the years
in the smelly old gym
voting, the old people,
the crowds, the baked cupcakes,
at 7:30 in the mornings.
No where to park. And the children
ducking under us
to get in their school to learn.
Also there, the Scholastic book sales.

It was okay to see the porta's and a
sturdy bench for the destroyers.
It's their job.
They need a break, too.

But I walked passed an empty
soda can, a Pepsi
laying passionately thrown.

I heard ticking knocks
in the trees, still tall,
those mysterious bugs
having a party.

The lone window with a blind
and a perfect circle loop pull-down handle,
still there.

The front door
devastated by bricks
depressed and destroyed.
Holding not the prestige
it owned from its birth.

Then I saw them.
The tiny chairs with
their legs straight up,
bent at odd angles,
(if only I could've saved one)
like a dead four legged loved animal
demolished and put to death in a mass grave.
They were the first thing I thought about
before I went on this walk.