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Apr 2014
He brought us up with dovish love
He cautioned us to be serpent wise,
He took us to schools each of us
In a genuine dream to forestall future misery
He fed us well from his meagre earnings,
He discriminated not love among the siblings
We grew up united in family bond,
He made us all to walk tall and proud
As sons and daughters of credible father,
He taught me in particular to read Mahatma Gandhi,
He inspired me with love for Napoleon Bonaparte,
He named me Alexander as a nomenclatural ritual
To procure spiritualities of charm and intellect,
He did us good and indeed we must all agree
As evinced in the love he gave to our mother,
We saw no fearful stress of threatening estrangement
As our mother always clang to us with superior enthusiasm.

He only began to feel pain on every swallow,
Saliva, other liquids and solid stuffs he painfully swallowed
He lost and lost weight on each day as we could do nothing,
But his wisdom and sense of humane picked,
Phenomenally usual precursor of impending death,
He got emaciated and weakling, his feeding decimated,
I desperately took him to hospital and surrendered him
To a man wearing humongous glasses on his bearded face,
The community of that place called him a doctor,
He checked my father and came out with a stark tiding;
Young man, your father has throat cancer!
The barium swallows has indicated all these,
There is eminent presence of tumors and carcinoma
Known for their foul perpetration of oesophagus cancer,
I received this dooms day news with mild trepidation,
He was discharged back to his village home
He died two days later in his hut, on his marital bed
The wooden bed with wick-work of strappings and strings
Crafted from stone hard animal hides and skins,
And it was Christmas day of December 2000,
At three in the afternoon, when my father died
Succumbing to death caused by throat cancer.
Alexander K Opicho
Written by
Alexander K Opicho  Kenya
(Kenya)   
907
 
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