Holding Nothing Loosely

I hold the possessions and positions that I currently carry
with an open hand, not from a failure of the necessary
grip of a man who means to keep what he has taken,
but because the grip of desperation leaves you badly shaken.

Holding nothing loosely means I am not ruled by what I own,
the territory, the capital, the reputation I have grown,
I will fight for all of it and I will not give it without cause,
but I will not let the having of it ever give me pause.

The man who clutches every gain as if the losing of it ends him
cannot advance because the fear of loss will only bend him
backward toward the previous position and the prior holding,
he spends his forward energy on keeping and withholding.

I have walked away from sectors that had cost me years to build,
because the forward opportunity was better, more fulfilled
with potential that the existing could not match in any decade,
you hold the gain until the forward is too strong to evade.