The Wood-Worm

The bread rose as the house
Washed down hill with the flood
And the rocks and the mud.

That’s the way that it goes,
Some things calm, some things rushed.
What you know is it goes.

Had the house held, the flood
Not broke, the bread been sliced,
Some left would have grown stale

And grown mold, the wood-worm,
Warm in the beams, would gnaw
For years. The house would fall.