Naught point naught one is what we are,
Powered each one by an ambivalent star,
Though you wouldn’t imagine from the way we behave,
As if it’s us, not them, that we need to save.

Naught point naught one percent is it,
Our share of life, our minuscule bit,
Of all that lives in this incredible place,
An unlikely rock spinning onwards through space.

I say share but I’m not sure that is really true,
To share is to say some for me, some for you,
But that’s not what we do, not often, not enough,
We seem hell bent on attempting a planetary bluff.

But perhaps, if we try, we’ll see we are mistook,
It’s not others we bluff if we carefully look,
It’s us who are blind, who wilfully stare,
At ourselves and ignore everything else that is there.

One in two million give or take,
Species that is, passing in our wake,
As we strive and extract and we dominate,
A world we treat as if insensate.

Ninety nine point nine nine percent,
The rest of all life who have to pay rent,
With their lives and their spirit to just be where they are,
Under the same shining light of that ambivalent star.

Ninety nine point nine nine is almost it all,
And should make us feel appropriately small,
While we’re busy seeing who’ll be first to blink,
My heart wonders, what does the silent majority think?