Mettle

We tie to who we are and our successes,
to our family, loves and friends.
We tie to ideals, our homelands
our beliefs and our flags.
In the blink of an eye, life moves on.
A life we cannot tie, as it fades away.
A life where reality grasps tight upon dreams.
A life, while we dream, we know all is ending.
If there is something that echos
all these feelings, it is the ocean.
The ocean can never be tied to,
it’s always moving with the tides.
Where there was the sea, now
there is the land.
And tomorrow, the land begone,
and the sea shall return.
The shores are at the mercy of
the ocean, the rivers, the tempests,
all are an immense mirror where
we look into the depth of ourselves.
No, we cannot tie to the ocean, with
each full moon, she rises high and as the
tide retreats, so with it goes part of us.
Showing the mettle; with ties that bind.

• Merriam-Webster Dictionary Defines METTLE: a vigor and strength of spirit or temperament.

Ken Allan Dronsfield is a disabled veteran and prize winning poet from New Hampshire, now residing in Oklahoma. A proud member of the Poetry Society of New Hampshire, he has five poetry collections to date: 'The Cellaring', 'A Taint of Pity', 'Zephyr's Whisper', ‘The Cellaring, Second Edition’ and ‘Sonnets and Scribbles’. Ken's been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize and six times for Best of the Net. He was First Prize Winner for the 2018 and 2019, Realistic Poetry International Nature Poetry Contests. He has most recently begun producing Creative Content on his YouTube channel and has had wonderful success sharing his poetry. Ken loves writing, hiking, thunderstorms, and spending time with his cats Willa and Yumpy. Ken Allan can be reached at kadfield@gmail.com. Read other articles by Ken Allan.