Occulture

I suppose you know by now the real
Treasure’s buried somewhere far from here—

This is just my false cache, blind entrance,
Empty chamber of signs and symbols,

No sarcophagus. Have you ever
Asked yourself why we would hide so much

For the sake of immortality
When the only slice of afterlife

Any of us ever manages
Comes of having our small corpses found,

Our hoards dug up, our tombs reopened?
O, I say ours, as if I belonged

To the class of humans who get tombs.
No, my cache is more like a jay’s stash

Of pine protein lost when the jay dies
Or gets too distracted or is stuffed

And makes it through a mild winter fat,
With no need to remember extra

Supplies of old memories hidden
In featureless duff and underbrush.

I am in a secret partnership,
Secret almost to myself. I hide

What I really want to keep in ways
That guarantee I’ll lose most of it,

And none of my kind ever find it.
Why do I do this? Ask my partner,

The pine whose reproduction depends
On fools who survive by caching seeds.