Fish out of water

I wonder who I’ll be when alone A salmon spent on Lagunitas creek A giving tree robbed of it nuts A sunset rooster with no eggs When your chick has flown the nest Even if for a summer vacation Who’ll give you meaning when life is fallow? Who will you be when your seed is in college? Will you be a cobweb at the mercy of the breeze? Children need bedrocks for roots to grow Children want a sober lighthouse keeper I can’t imagine that day coming When we're backstage in their theater You can’t retire from parenthood Even if your fishies are not there Even if you abandon them in the flesh Do trees miss acorns dropped? Do fish long for their brood to go to college? Do you never think of absent cherubs? Like salmons’ last gasp upriver We expel loved ones, it’s natural But we are human, not fish, not seed We are mandated to nurture Even if it kills us or kills us in dreams No more or less than Coho Resigned to golf and Mahjong Collecting Medicare Waiting at the pool Where once was caviar Waiting for sons and daughters For them to swim upstream If God allows us retirement Grant dilettantes a hobby Show and tell darlings When and if They return Almost makes Growth and breeding Bearable If only I were And will be A Coho I’d know What to do With myself Now and then Rather than die It’s only natural To lose To the river And to the ocean Waiting Like a human In Lagunitas Alone