Sunshine Mine Fire Poetry

I plan to write a series of poems that all have the Sunshine Mine fire as a part of their story. I don't find the poems that narrate what happened in the mine during the disaster to be very satisfying. For me, poems that have the fire as an almost off-stage event, but an event that unsettles everyday details of the survivors' lives work better for me. Here's my first:

Free

Down in the Jewell Shaft of the Sunshine Mine
The men called bologna horse cock
And the miner who loved horse cock most was
Carl Nash. His hands chewed and bloody
From shoveling mine car after mine car of muck,
At lunch Carl unfolded a cloth napkin on the lunchroom
Table and laid out his horse cock and onion sandwich,
Prayed thanks, and ate it like bread at the communion rail.

Billy trudged down two houses after each snow fall
And heaved shovel after shovel into tall berms to clear
The way for Carl Nash to tell Billy he shovelled snow
Like a one-legged man in an ass kicking contest
And drive his Rambler Ambassador on to the glass road
Leading up Big Creek Gulch and day shift at the Sunshine Mine.

When the mine fire hit the lunch room at the 4100
Level, Carl Nash died with a cloth napkin unfolded
And dropped his nose into his spongy horse cock sandwich.
Months later snow fell hard and deep and Billy
Trudged down and offered to shovel snow for Mrs. Nash,
Who thanked him very much but couldn’t afford to pay him
Like Carl did. Billy trudged back toward home
And turned around and knocked again on Mrs. Nash’s door
And said, “It’s okay. I’ll shovel your walk for free.”