When I Have Died

Dorothy wrote this poem on the death of her husband John Offenberger in 1999.
Dorothy died February 2007 and so it is reproduced here.
It may be used with acknowledgement

When I have died, just say that I am dead

Not gone to meet the Lord or just passed on

Send me no waxen flowers to deck my bed

Remember me by laughter when I'm gone

I am content here on the spinning earth

Part of the cycling soils eternity

Where atoms part and join in bold rebirth

I ask no other immortality

So let no pleading parson pray for me

Endow me with no posthumous Christian heart

Spread no bright halo of hypocrisy

The good and bad in me both have a part

So as I loved the earth, the bush the sky

Let kowhai blossoms on my coffin lie.

Pleides - Matariki

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