myth

Bulrush basket and my hands ached with the weaving.
It did not matter to me what you become.
A great king and a teller of lies?
A name written into abstraction with the telling of it all?
God’s favor is a flippant thing
and I have been a luckless woman,
but it seems I, alone, saw
the vanity of your pestilences and
the carving out an order for our people.

I too walked eyes bright with unpromised sand,
but still I saw you, lecher, gazing at our daughters.
All your sins quickly forgiven by a sea of
divided women lusting after vanishing greatness.
The swarming injustice put down
when no blood above the door
protects the sleeping faithful.

Myth-makers have had their way with me and
the telling of my own compassion,
but I, alone, know
that your drowning meant nothing to me.
I fought out against the sucking mud that day,
the river heavy with heat and undercurrents
of serpents, and looked only forward.