An Awareness Thinks It’s Special

One popular pastime of people
Is deciding what most makes people
Special compared to anything else,

Species apart from anything else.
It could be, what makes people special
Are these thoughts about what makes people

People, the species apart. A rat,
An ordinary rat, successful
Thanks to people, scampers in branches

Of an ordinary maple tree,
One of a species nonnative, here
At least, thriving here thanks to people,

Just as in many towns and cities
Recently sprung up around the world,
Very recently found in the world,

There are parks and leafy neighborhoods
With ordinary, nonnative rats
In ordinary, nonnative trees.

And it all seems so ordinary,
Rats and people and cities and trees,
And, you know, there is no one species

Being special here. There’s a special
Thing happening, something in the air,
Many-specied, recently aware.