Fallen Giants Land

Ten times as tall as speculation, head yet not in the clouds,

their shadow circles crossed again some ways out past the horizon.

Reassuring with their gaze,

remnants of a more heroic age,

having outlived a million written pages.

Across the seas, fierce visages weathered numberless hurricanes;

from their elevated advantage, over ages seen as righteous,

Integrity and Honesty, first two giants stood.

First hand carved from the hardest and prettiest wood,

then stone, to outlast all else, as real giants could.

From solid onyx, granite, and hard marble; best that could be procured.

Perseverance leading them, more giants appeared,

From hardest part of that stone and bronze Determination came,

Hard Work, tempered in ambitions flame;

Loyalty and Fidelity sharing a common last name.

One took longer than most to get carved out, be accepted,

but then stood taller and paled the rest, we named it Honesty

surrounded it with unassailable walls, we thought,

only worked when practiced by all,

one of the last, and hardest, to fall.

A few more, no less formidable, took form, grew identifiable.

Though wind and rain, Fidelity  and Courage became recognizable.

Our giants could deny Nature itself, or so it seemed,

though little was known of how giants were so purposely schemed

until the first one was found to have decidedly leaned.

Tenaciousness, with sculpted sides, thought to be indestructible,

single mindedly reaching for what likely now will never be grasped,

which made these seemingly permanent values vulnerable.

With futility denying continued effort, progress stalled, then passed.

Of the giants, Integrity would be the last to crawl,

Yet somehow was nonetheless the first to fall.