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Small Battles: Big Wars

We
would rather f-bomb
or recite angry litanies
of forbidden witchery
than speak the word: cancer.

It’s when few of one’s
trillions of cells run amok,
it’s a war fought with
knives, rads, and poisons.

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Look both ways to see your own beginning and end.
Mind the gaps, fight the battle, die with dignity.

John Updike, best known, perhaps, as a novelist, was a poet. This short poem of his is one of my favorites regarding life and death. He died of lung cancer in 2009.