PASSENGER’s PRAYER

Megan Hollingsworth
Sep 1, 2018 · 2 min read

If I be anyone in this life

let me be a messenger

let me write beauty on the sky

let me write a love letter

so wide and deep and long

Martha’s Groom by Denise Monaghan

that it turns day to night

forcing the gaze up.

Let me be a reminder

of what is great

and what is small.

And if my being is not enough,

if my death is the only proof

of the power to exhaust life,

let it be


Note: PASSENGER’s PRAYER was written during a month’s witness with passenger pigeon September 2014. September 1, 2014 was the 100th year anniversary of the last known living passenger pigeon’s death. She, named Martha, was born and raised and died in captivity. Martha did not know the great flock and, even if she had flown free, would not have known the vast seamless forest that supported passenger ‘cities’, mostly cleared for mono-crop agriculture by her time.

PASSENGER’s PRAYER references the martyr — one willing to sacrifice themselves to get an urgent message across. PASSENGER’s PRAYER is posted (September 1, 2018) in memory of Martha and David Buckel, who self-immolated April 14, 2018 by burning his body alive in protest to collective suicidal by fossil fuel. David was a prominent LGBTQIA rights lawyer and Senior Organics Recovery Coordinator for the NYC Compost Project hosted by Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Megan Hollingsworth

Written by

EXTINCTION WITNESS writer & creative director

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