This is how the forest regenerates:
It is the grey squirrel’s nature
to bury hundreds of nuts,
to repossess only
the most proximate, opportune.
Those harder-to-reach,
those inearthed in the mud of relentless
rainstorms, those stuck
among persistent predators, it forgets,
and with time
they germinate, new nourishers
of whole ecosystems.

Your legacy is greater than early
consumption,
your shell stronger than the teeth
of mammalian instinct.

He was always
going to forget you,
and this too
is an investment.