Weeding

I have the milkweed drying out on the driveway, awaiting burial in the compost pile.

I remember Jim Conrad talking about weeds as being plants growing where you don't want them to grow.

Even the most beautiful rose can be weed if it grows unwanted, taking nutrients and light from other plants more delightful to the eye, ones that require some nurturing to fully blossom.

And still, the milkweed plays a part of life, taking the energy of the soil and adding the energy of the sun, giving nitrogen, eventually, back into the soil.

I wonder if the balance is in favor of the earth, the sunlight converted into soil.

I look at all we consume that is not returned usably to the earth, and wonder how much the very use of non-repleshinable resources is part of the grasp of the material world on us. One of the ways we are strangled on what should be a sojourn.