Most jobs require some prior training or experience, but the job of being a parent consists almost entirely of on-the-job training, and it continues for years. Then, about the time we have developed the parenting skills that we had hoped for earlier in life, we become unemployed. Our children grow up and start their own families. This poem tires to express a parent’s concern as a young one leaves the nest.
THE FLEDGLING’S FLIGHT
Al Vester
The fledgling fluttered, faltered, flapping fiercely in the air
While parent doves feared their love would easily be snared.
The fledgling feels the freedom of being on her own.
The father fears the foes of fledglings flying all alone:
The calculating cat crouching under camouflage of leaves,
The hovering hawk hunting high above the tangle of the trees,
The power line with channeled lightning singing in its core,
The hungry hunter heavy with his weaponry of war.
All these threats to wing and feather known to silence songs so fair,
All unknown by fledgling flying now in blissful unawares.
The tiny, tired, feathered father watches taut with tender care,
Knowing that his fledgling’s freedom trembles in the tepid air.
For the hope of growing children is the time when they will part.
Yet the fee for fledgling’s freedom is a parent’s broken heart.
Gone the time of sheltered nesting in the gentle summer breeze.
Now the time of bitter lessons as the leaves begin to freeze,
Teaching her that life takes scratching, digging in the weeds.
There the tedious toils train her in the filling of her needs.
Meals no longer stuff themselves down her open beak
And life is not considerate of the timid, slow, or weak.
Departing home
Throughout childhood, a child’s parents are preparing him or her for the time when they will be ready to stand on their own as adults. Continue reading “How long should a parent worry about their adult child?”
