Fledging

Leaving home strips the money tree

of its husks, lays bare notions of plenty

revealing unquenchable thirst.

First, there's the thrill of accomplishment,

the illusion of a self-sustaining organism,

and then the odds that young buds

will flower beneath the sweltering rays

of summer heat, that the earth's moisture

will sustain the herbage, nourish the tree.

Finally, the reality that dicing nature

whirls the wheel while roots struggle

to compete for footing beneath the turf.