Poem: The Delivery of Modern Medicine

This poem is incredibly early and rough; I didn't really want to post it, but time's up and a blog must be entered.
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The Delivery of Modern Medicine

starts with a number, eight digits and a band,
a looping, a manacle, a room and a curtain
budding into a nurse, a cuff, another looping,
numbers, more numbers, numbers divided by
other numbers, into a poke and whisper
of the arm, into poles and bags and foot-manacles
to stop the clots that bloom from being bound.

The Delivery of Modern Medicine
echoes with the repetition of story, and again
to each wayward passenger on this medical train
the same prodding fingers, bounding stethoscopes
reverberating into routine alarms,
the voice of the phlebotomist, and then the intern
and then the resident, and then the attending.

Oh, the Delivery of Modern Medicine
quakes with the steps of social work
the power behind the throne, the one
who moves patients, rocks, mountains.

The Delivery of Modern Medicine
trades in pills, tablets, capsules, caplets,
barters in knives and lasers
a commerce in drugs of Janus,
two faces, two names, a dozen colors.

The Delivery of Modern Medicine
ought to start with a touch, with a warmth
with a hand on a shoulder, a grasping
of the willows and oaks, a burgeoning
of sense, a blossoming of age, recapitulation
of that we know, deep within us.