Bless the Doctor, O my soul,
____ and my daughter’s soul
and all my daughter’s missing genes shall
bless His holy degree.

My daughter’s shortness, bless Him
for He blesses her with a laugh
through His nostrils when I show Him
____ a photo of her with classmates.

Bless Him, her scoliosis,
for He sees it, and measures the curve
____ in degrees (forty), and seeks
to straighten it or can’t and leaves,

____ head shaking, in favor
of other bodies to be made more right.
Bless Him, O my daughter’s heart,
for He will hear it and tell me

the murmur’s barely there
____ like His finding nothing
took an evil something
away. Touch His finger, O you

undiagnosed soul, for He will make you
____ not a Michelangelo
but the body you knew not
you were, the named body,

the wrong body, housing your being
like a planet squeezed into a carport.
He is the perfect Doctor
____ of dissection. He is the one true Doctor.

Do not worship false Doctors.
Now lay my daughter’s body
____ on the altar, and my body too
because I made her.

Bless the Doctor,
O my body, which is bell-curved
which is aching which is aging
which looks upward,

sees the knife blade, hears
His baritone: Take two
of these and call me, no, don’t
call me I’ll call you.