Holding Ground

There is a point in every campaign where advancing is the trap,
Where the smart play is to stop
and read the distances on the map,
Where the ground already taken is the prize worth keeping whole,
And the next horizon is a hunger that could swallow you like coal.

I learned to hold my ground before I learned to push ahead,
Learned the difference between stubbornness
and reading what is said,
By the silence at the frontier and the weight of what you own,
And the cost of overreaching on the seed already sown.

Holding ground, not giving, not retreating,
Holding ground while all the smaller forces are competing,
Holding ground takes something that the forward rush forgets,
Patience in the holding is the deepest test yet.

They came at me in increments with pressure and with noise,
With the kind of slow erosion that wears down all the boys,
I’d mapped my perimeter and I knew my every edge,
And I held each line of it the way a climber holds a ledge.

Some men confuse the holding with a failure to advance,
Think that staying is surrendering and stasis kills the chance,
But the general who holds the ridge while other forces move,
Is the one who wins the longer argument, that’s what you prove.

I stand at every line I drew with everything behind me,
And let the pressure test the walls of what I’ve come to find me,
Because a man who knows his borders
and defends them without flinching,
Is a man the next campaign will find already clinching.