I Am Not Ready to Die Yet

I Am Not Ready To Die Yet


My death peers at the world through a plumeria tree
And the tree looks out over the neighbor’s house
to the Pacific
And the blue water god commands this part of the world
Without question, rules from the kingdom of secrets
and tremendous fishes. I was once given to the water.
My ashes will return there,
but I am not ready to die yet
Nor am I ready to leave the room
In which we made love last night.

This morning I carry the desire to live, inside my thigh
It pulses there: a banyan,
a mynah bird or young impatient wind
Until I am ready to fly again, over the pungent flowers
Over the sawing and drilling workmen making a mess
In the yard next door, over water
And the memory of your shoulders
In candlelight.

It is endless, this map of eternity, like a watermonster
Who swallows everything whole including the bones
And all the terrible words and how it blooms
With delectable mangoes, bananas
With the most faithful of planets,
But I am not ready to die yet.

And when it happens, as it certainly will, the lights
Will go on in the city and the city will go on shining
at the edge of the water—it is endless, this map
And the waves of longing from the kingdom of suffering
Will linger in the room in which we made love last night—
When I am ready to die I will know it,
As surely as I know your gaze
As we undressed close to the gods in that room.

There will be flowers, there are always flowers,
And a fine blessing rain will fall
through the net of the clouds
Bearing offerings to the stones, to all who linger
Here— It will be a day like any other.
Someone will be hammering
someone frying fish
The workmen will go home
to eat poi, pork and rice.

Joy Harjo