Kenneth O’Keefe

A Sonnet to Be Read Upon 
My Death

In time, before I’ve spent my span of days
And am within my coffin laid to view,
I dread the dream that I’d be proffered praise
For wiser words and deeds I deigned to do.
If good were served, I know that it’s a fact,
As much as death evokes such charity,
That I’ve created havoc winds that cracked
And bent the souls I hold most dear to me.

So, now, in death, don’t let my life’s truth grow
To fiction forced by the profoundest plot.
Instead let memory of me lie low
As grass that’s cut and edged into its lot.
    Just say that I was human~eminently so~
    And that I threw a sharp and heavy shadow.

_____

Kenneth O’Keefe lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Poet Lore, The Lyric, Blue Unicorn, Illya’s Honey, The Chaffin Journal, and numerous other publications.