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.