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
Copyright © Triny Xiang | Year Posted 2025
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