Great Regulars: [John Updike] come to terms with the gravity

of his health with the reaction of a man learning his car needs a new tire:

A wake-up call? It seems that death has found
the portals it will enter by: my lungs,
pathetic oblong ghosts, one paler than
the other on the doctor's viewing screen.

The poem, "Oblong Ghosts," quickly turns from the devastating news to the writer's satisfaction with the presidential election, comparing his feeling to "Christmas Day in Shillington," his childhood home.

from Bob Hoover: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: 'Endpoint' by John Updike

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