“Regard”

By Thomas Page

Rivers meet and separate without care

To humanity’s wishes. They flow and ebb

According to the cycles set before the rivers

Began to speak with a soft rage cutting

Rocks from earth , easing the seasons into

The practices of these breathing an element

Forming its very essence of water.

From this bank, a hero emerges to do

Something beyond the sowing and reaping

To spew fibers of legends sewn to

Become the tapestries of those claiming

The blood shared by origins and royals.

This hero may be any one who turns

Away from the evils of the self which

Take a blade to the trees built on the banks

Of the rivers.—

—He or she, dressed in the

Raiments deserving of penstrokes, hurries

Into whatever battle or myth or

Lost truth fantasized by happy poets

Regaling the time when someone stood out

Among the wheat or rice to challenge the

Sun, the moon, the the stars, the rain, the clouds.

The hero, a sieve of malice, cements the

Walls of the city holding those common

Possession claimed by the same kind under

A banner flying over the rivers

Which flow without any regard to them.

A hero is born like any other of

His or her kind, must change to suit their deaths.

Daughters of eagles, sons of bulls must be

Ordained as the sources of except’nal

People revered by the same lot as them.

Statues are erected for all to mimic

The posed display of what it means to be;

To be great, to be righteous, to be kind,

To be honorable, to be exemplary,

To be what they all should be as they are.

The statue does’t cry, doesn’t bleed red,

Doesn’t live, doesn’t die, doesn’t any

Action besides freezing a moment in

Time when their humanness was overcome

Like the river flowing without regard