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Patriotism

By Dave Connolly

for Paul D. Wright, USMC, Operation Desert Storm
and Eric Larsen, USMC, who resisted

Let's make no mistake here
about where I'm coming from
or have been.

To stand, with a gun in your hand
and face your opposite number,
to do the bidding of your country,
is surely one
of the most heroic acts
a man or woman
might perform in life.

To refuse to do that,
against all odds,
if it is clearly wrong,
is no less so.

Dave Connolly