I take the bowl of kitchen scraps - egg shells,
Onion skins, tops and tails of celery
Stalks - discarded cooking tonight’s dinner
And add them to the waste pile of meals past -
Brown lettuce, apple cores, the neglected
Tomato - molding before it could be
Enjoyed - the bag of spinach reducing
To slime. I stack these ingredients - those
Savored, and those neglected during
The weeks when cooking gives way to take out -
Between layers of leaves, spent vegetable
Plants, and pine straw to reclaim the useless
For an offering for nature’s alchemists:
Bacteria, actinomycetes, and
Fungi. They turn the mess into black gold.
Soil, dark as rich chocolate cake, now lays
Atop the thick ganache of Georgia clay.
Decayed dreams now bring life, scattered on the
Garden, to feed the seeds of something new.