First Conquest

First Conquest

The first one was a back-room deal in a city I had just found,
A handshake and a paper and a twenty-dollar sound,
It was not large by anyone’s accounting of the scale,
But the first conquest is the one that sets the measure
for the tale.

I walked out of that building with a different kind of gait,
Something had aligned inside the mechanism of my fate,
The proof of concept sitting like a coal inside my fist,
The first conquest, the one I’ll never adequately list.

First conquest, first conquest, taste of the beginning,
First conquest, first conquest, the origin of winning,
Before you’ve got a dozen and the ledger fills with weight,
First conquest, first conquest, the one that made you great.

They say you never forget it and the cliche pays its dues,
Because the first time that you take a thing,
you’re painting with new hues,
Every other victory references back to this first frame,
Every hill I’ve taken since has borrowed from that first claim.

I called the person who had doubted me before the sun went down,
Not to gloat, I called because I needed to recount,
Every moment that I’d doubted my own forward-running drive,
And the first conquest made it possible to feel completely alive.

Here’s to every person at the very start of their campaign,
Who’s got that first objective locked
and bearing through the rain,
The first time is the template, the first time is the mold,
And every conquest after it is carved from that first gold.