The Bread Was Riddled with Little Holes

​The bread was riddled with little holes,
Little black specks were moving
On it and through it, parts were
Powdery, shapeless, creatures grooving

Tunnels, stumbling into each other,
Blindly biting, the bread discarded
On a pine-needle ground, it fed
The chipmunk and the guarded

Porcupine, the traveler saw the
Snapping turtle, the suspicious
Crow, the coming hundred years,
The tooth marks of the avaricious

Bear, the sniffing wolf, he saw
The rotten loaf of bread dissolve,
The lichen and the ostrich fern,
The slow, windy dawn resolve

Into light, the undergrowth,
The vines, the nematodes,
The men that tend the planet
And walk along the forest roads.