A Manila Chinese Cemetery Is A City Within A City Poem by Roger Gerald Hicks

Tombs are houses with provisioned tables
and freshly made beds...

Dad tells me aside they haven't
had sex in eleven years yet looks
content in the Golden Anniversary
pictures, tho she was miffed because
he wouldn't wear his teeth.

A year after, muted by the stroke,
he pulls the IV's from his now skinny
wrists- pleads with dull blue eyes.
Tearfully, we accede: wish him
God speed as he slips into a coma.

Mamma doesn't mourn so much as
bemoan; takes his passing as an insult;
tries to appear resigned but,
his vamoosing has struck her core.

I plead with her, "Come visit. Let me
care for you as you once cared for me."

"Yes, " her hollow reply.

She tires easily and her pallor indicates
hepatitis, but it's pancreatic cancer.
The young surgeon removes it- cures her.

"I just want to go home, " she says on
the phone, teeth clinched against pain.

"Should I come? " "No, " they assure
me. "She'll be okay." We don't dream sati.

Fooling all, she follows Dad- dies
quietly without begging leave.

In my house there's a tomb- one
room with freshly made bed
awaiting a grieving mother.

Perhaps if I listen at Frost's telephone,
I'll once again hear a voice from childhood:
"Come home. Fresh cookies are cooling."