“Nothing gold can stay.” ~ Robert Frost
They wanted to know what set
the counters off, what made
the cells in his blood divide,
how it was they were wildly,
overly proliferating— And so
the doctors pulled from vein
or deep in the pith, sample
after sample. The last one
spoke of how it would feel
when the aspirating needle
punched through numbed layers:
like being tackled, like running
into the end of a pole. Fat then
muscle then bone, blunt surface
trauma paid as coin for entrance
into one dimly lit tunnel
of the body’s amphitheatre.
Within walls, fluids rush through
elaborate pipes, an architecture still
more or less the same as in medieval
times. Angled sight from peering down
a tiny scope: one end of the probe
tipped gold like a beacon, hook
upon which some meaning is meant
to return; and on a table,
quiet hum of the centrifuge.