The Flood

This evening in our flat there rose a flood That made our rooms and entrance hall a lake As unattended bath-taps churned the sud Into a foaming torrent by mistake Our darling daughter whom we shall not name Had nonchalantly turned those bath-taps on Before returning to some film or game Or following the social pantheon Behind her mobile phone she lay enthralled Forgetful of the steaming waters’ rise Which overflowed in bathside waterfall And blitzkrieged our apartment in a trice Too late the cry was raised and taps were closed And towels press-ganged as mops then stemmed the tide And floors as clean as if they’d been steam-hosed Emerged pristine as all those cork-tiles dried “All’s well that ends well” - wrote of old the Bard Thus did our flood not clean our dusty flat? Sadly not all; for as those tiles turned hard The margin of each one grew thick and fat Alas our hallway and our bedroom floors That once were smooth and level, now did change Into a row of bumps, as slowly soars From crashed tectonic plates a mountain range