Daddy laid it in my hands when I was barely ten years old,
said a man who holds his weapon holds more than iron cold,
said a man who knows the trigger knows the weight of what it starts,
and the rifle found my shoulder like it always owned that part.
Walked the timber in the winter, knocked the frost from every limb,
learned to breathe between the heartbeats, learned to let the edges dim,
first clean shot across the hollow was a wound I could not place,
but I carried it to sundown and I never walked the same space.
The first rifle, it was heavier than steel,
the first rifle, there was something in its feel,
like a contract signed in silence with the blood inside your veins,
what a man picks up in earnest is a man who takes the weight,
the first rifle changed the way I see the light,
the first rifle was the first hard thing done right.
Twenty years and a deployment and a war across the sea,
and I held a different weapon and it held a piece of me,
the mechanics were familiar but the targets were not the same,
and I breathed between the heartbeats but the hollow was not tame.
Back home I keep the first one on the rack above the door,
it is cleaner than the service piece I carried off to war,
Daddy said a man who holds his weapon holds more than iron cold,
I believe him every morning as the day breaks grey and old.