Aristotle organized the living world into animals and plants. That      was the easy part.What separates us from animals is that we think about thinking,      I tell my students as we read the dystopias of their fathers’ fathers,
though they are mostly unimpressed with unattractive people      killing one another for the state.                   Something delicate has been lifted from them,                   a fear we could slip from our own grasp.Always a girl raises her hand to amend: as far as we know,      we are the only,extending the privilege, though it serves so little if the conclusion      arrived at, the thought thought through, lets the driver plough
the sidewalk in an SUV,      bans the hungry crossing borders.                   Something like a sickness of the unfamiliar,                   the way we shiver at each other’s names.Occasionally, a predator spares the weaker species      out of something presumably,
not thinking about thinking. And I protect these exceptions      with amateur devotion, courage for an order
that concedes to the weak,                                      that looks and really sees, and pities.