Ever since I was diagnosed with high blood pressure I have become used to baring my left arm and watching a succession of nurses fill test tubes with my blood, ready to go for analysis.  I am not squeamish about such things, that ended years ago when I was a blood donor and I asked where my blood was being collected as I was lying there with a tube in my arm.  A jolly nurse said, "In this bottle!" and she held up a glass bottle and swished my blood around so that I could see it more plainly.  It was a little shocking to see that much outside my body which should have been in the inside, but that was only for a moment and I have taken the various extractions with equanimity.
     The trouble comes when the analysis of those phials does not confirm rude health, but points out problems.  The blood tests then take on an entirely different complexion.
     It was a visit to the nurse in our local practice that concentrated my mind on a forthcoming blood test and this poem is the result.
     I would not want to give the wrong impression: I feel and am feeling fine and I think that the feeling at the end of the poem could be something about which we need to think at any time in our lives - not just when there is a looming blood test!

Blood

Red.

Startling.

                        It always

looks the same.  Each time

I see it fill a tube.  And

silent, telling nothing

to the naked eye, and yet

it’s eloquent enough to

fill a page with printed

numbers – some with asterisks.

That is the underside,

the hidden themes

within the garish

oxygen-puffed

corpuscles.

Which way the story goes,

to tragedy or comedy or farce,

is not yet settled.

Anti-climax is my choice:

a trite and tired soap,

where daily nothingness

leads unexceptionally

towards an easy,

distant, end!

I am beginning to think that there is a sort of 'look' to my poems that this one exemplifies: short, irregular stanzas with a few separated words and extra spaces with a reliance on the comma to keep the rhythm together!