The Talking Mirror Test

Animals can’t help much
How selfishly they act.
In fact, animals can’t

Much help how unselfish
It can seem when they act.
So many ancestors,

So many lives, and what
They went through to get here,
Those animals—and plants,

And fungi, archaea,
Etc. The whole
Heavy load of Earth’s lives,

What everyone went through,
That what’s here now lives here.
No one here now can know.

What you can know is that
You’re an animal, yes,
And can’t help you’re selfish

Or, sometimes, unselfish.
But what this thing mind is,
This thing you do? That’s new.