The Blood Test

A day gray as old socks.

A distant day cold and remote,

only allowing me. Diffident.

No welcome.

Snow’s on its way

from the Great Lakes.

Someone’s tipped off today.

She’s in a foul mood.

Not a chance of sun this day to warm her steely heart.

I drove to the clinic at 6AM

to give blood, and was surprised at the garish neon lights;

A waiting room with very quiet, brightly lit patients,

like the lunch counter in Hopper’s ‘Nighthawks.’ * .

I  gave my blood before the light of day.

A vampire’s clinic. I expected

Bela Lugosi in cape and pomade to

sashay from behind the nurse’s station,

and, in deep Transylvanian, call: “Who eees next?”

The nurse who finally took mine, was a

Pillsbury-faced Clairol blond,

a mother person.

Gentle, she spoke candied words.

She came upon the fugitive vein immediately.

Hardly a needle prick and she

extracted enough of my life to fill eleven vials,

four larger and seven the size of my pinky.

·         a 1942 painting by Edward Hopper of a Greenwich Village restaurant