Pigweed

Can you blame the Palmer amaranth?
You can hate it and try to kill it,
But when you read that pigweed seedlings,

Days old and dying from herbicide,
Will use their last pulse of energy
To make and drop seeds before they die,

Doesn’t it remind you of salmon
Full of roe in the jaws of grizzlies,
Who will gush their eggs into the air,

Since some will fall in the stream, some
May encounter random clouds of milt?
Doesn’t it remind you just a bit

Of the even more grotesque human
Male body’s response to being hanged,
Ejaculation just before death?

Of course, pigweed strangles the soybeans
Humans eat. Grizzlies didn’t evolve
To tenderly cultivate salmon.

They snag them with long claws on huge paws,
To try to survive hibernation.
It’s loose to call it competition.

There is or isn’t generation.
Sex didn’t anticipate hangmen.
Adaptations limn limitations

The way death masks and rubbings outline
Negative impressions. You can see
Threat’s profile reversed in every swerve.

Lives are greedy for more life, and life
Keeps them greedy by making more lives.
Can you blame amaranth? Well, maybe.