Poem: Cenerentola

I'm still trying to write a poem a week, but the timing of the posts is a little erratic. This is based on my second night of call in the ICU.
-
Cenerentola

Midnight rounds alone
wheeling a computer from room to room
humming.

I flip through lists of patients
check new labs
ask the nurse if she needs anything.

I find a glass slipper
in one of the rooms, next to the vent
and wonder, what magic broke
this midnight

what transformation of man--
reduced to numbers, to breaths
and drips, and what sorcery
in beeping and alarm
we conjure in our efforts
to stave midnight mercy.

This is what a doctor must feel like
a fairy godmother
who sees conjuration
and hounds to reverse it
to tame that pumpkin
and shackle the curse
which has sent order awry.

These vials, syringes of epinephrine
they are our potions,
and as I stand at the bedside
conducting a symphony of humours
draining a little of this
infusing a bit of that
lulling to sleep, a spell of a thousand years
a milk that seduces--
These are our rituals
our tomes, our handbooks
the art in finding that one spell
that, like this slipper, fits.