I Am Not Ready To Die Yet by Aracelis Girmay

MARGINALIA • SKIP TO THE POEM

1.
I am staring at Andrew Wyeth’s Wind from the Sea. I am found there, on the soft wisp of the curtain. I am on the lace where the wind blows through. I am there in the thick of trees. I am on the ledge of the window. I am in the water. I am the small embroidered bird. I am trying to tell you what yearning is. I am failing.

2.
Perhaps you’re meant for elsewhere, K. wrote me, so many years ago. Maybe you have to leave so you can come back.

3.
Please accept my tenderness, and by that I mean, these poems. And by that I mean, this soft space that has allowed us to exist.

I Am Not Ready To Die Yet
Aracelis Girmay

after Joy Harjo

I am not ready to die yet: magnolia tree
going wild outside my kitchen window
& the dog needs a house, &, by the way,
I just met you, my sisters & I
have things to do, & I need
to talk on the phone with my brother. Plant a tree.
& all the things I said I’d get better at.

In other words, I am not ready to die yet
because didn’t we say we’d have a picnic
the first hot day, I mean,
the first really, really hot day?
Taqueria. & swim, kin,
& mussel & friend, don’t you go, go, no.

Today we saw the dead bird, & stopped for it.
& the airplanes glided above us. & the wind
lifted the dead bird’s feathers.

I am not ready to die yet.
I want to live longer knowing that wind
still moves a dead bird’s feathers.
Wind doesn’t move over & say That thing
can’t fly. Don’t go there. It’s dead.
No, it just blows & blows lifting
what it can. I am not ready
to die yet. No.

I want to live longer.
I want to love you longer, say it again,
I want to love you longer
& sing that song
again. & get pummeled by the sea
& come up breathing & hot sun
& those walks & those kids
& hard laugh, clap your hands.
I am not ready to die yet.

Give me more dreams. To taste the fig.
To hear the coyote, closer.
I am not ready to die yet.
But when I go, I’ll go knowing
there will be a next time. I want

to be like the cactus fields
I drove through in Arizona.
If I am a cactus, be the cactus
I grow next to, arms up,
every day, let me face you,
every day of my cactus life.

& when I go or you go,
let me see you again somewhere,
or you see me.

Isn’t that you, old friend, my love?
you might say, while swimming in some ocean
to the small fish at your ankle.
Or, Weren’t you my sister once?
I might say to the sad, brown dog who follows me down
the street. Or to the small boy
or old woman or horse eye
or to the tree. I know I knew I know you, too.
I’m saying, could this be what makes me stop
in front of that dogwood, train whistle, those curtains
blowing in that window. See now,
there go some eyes you knew once
riding the legs of another animal,
wearing its blue sky, magnolia,
wearing its bear or fine
or wolf-wolf suit, see,
somewhere in the night a mouth is singing
You remind me You remind me
& the heart flips over in the dusky sea of its chest
like a fish signaling Yes, yes it was me!
& yes, it was, & you were there, & are here now,
yes, honey, yes hive, yes I will, Jack,
see you again, even if it’s a lie, don’t
let me know, not yet, not ever, I need to think
I’ll see you, oh,
see you
again.

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This poem appeared in Kingdom Animalia by Aracelis Girmay, published by BOA Editions, 2011. Shared here with profound gratitude.

Read more works by Aracelis Girmay • Find books by this poet • Or view my library 

Explore poems in pursuit of: tenderness • endings • mortality • Or browse the index 

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