Dear Martha
Let me fly
On your side of extinction
Dampen my anger
Of being denied the sight
Of your rainbow colored plumage
Where you filled the sky
with all your relations.
Our migration
Will take rest
On the island
Of the Great Auk
Bird chatter co-mingles
Next to their nests
Where there are no cracked eggs
Or strangled necks.
Our flight
Sweeps past
Bones of every creature
Cradled by every sea,
Every ocean, Every river
Every desert
My anger
cloaked in the disguise of grief
Falls through cumulous clouds
Raining drops of DNA
Of all the beings
Humans exterminate.
I am Martha
I fly on the other side
of extinction.
—
Yvette Wiley is one of the Tribal Liaisons with the South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center. She has been published in the literary journals: The Externalist, The New York Times Review, and Touch: The Journal of Healing. Yvette is a citizen of Muscogee Nation and is Ecovlke (Deer Clan). She lives with 8 cats and 2 dogs within her Tribes reservation boundary in the heart of the city of Tulsa, OK.
