Naturalism

How can I be an animal?
Would an animal ask this question?
An animal asks this question!
What is it that they are?
What is it that we are?

What we are, I think
I know: we think and know.
But we're the ones who sing!
Who dance and dwell, speak,
Write down ideas
And calculate,
Reason and dispute,
Desire, fantasize,
Inquire, care, dance!
All of this motley
Dazzles us:
If we must be ourselves
We cannot see ourselves.

What is an animal?
A thing that lives.
An animal's a thing?
Well it is something...
An organism, ordered,
Organized, functional
And functioning -- the thing
Fulfills its purposes: we beasts
Have purposes to satisfy --
To sate we sow
And reap ourselves:
Our being or beings like us
Our own reward.

An animal lives -- so what is life?
An animal is big or small, simple
Or complex, intelligent
Or surd -- but an animal lives.
We live and fish and bears and insects
Live. We eat and fuck and fart.
That's hard to digest.

"But what's the matter?
Isn't it just matter?" Life
Is not reduced to matter -- matter
Is induced to life. Our arrangement
Has its own potentials -- life
Is this potential. But possibilities
Diverge -- I cannot be
A bee, nor can it be
What I am. Speaking,
Building, dancing, caring
Are our properties -- our possibilities --
Potentials maybe in the stuff that is arranged
But only as arranged. Arrangement can
Indubitably be explained -- but that
Is not our business. Our business,
Our concern -- is what we do.