January Oracle (edit)

[brynmawr1]

This feels a bit overwritten now, and your original “goal, to write about the experience of consulting the I Ching” seems to have fallen by the wayside (not least with the introduction of Catholic indulgences.) That said, the last four line work well.
I thought I did include and expand the "experience of consulting the I Ching"?  I was not thinking in any way about Catholicism, and I think you can use indulgence in the Catholic sense of buying off your punishment for sins in a non-religious context.  When you say "last four lines work well, is that in reference to my revison?

Maybe you’d consider something like “I Ching in the Waiting Room” as a title? (Gives a context which you then don’t need to incorporate into the body of the poem.)

Mmmmm, I'd prefer not.

A December diagnosis
It’s strange, but I’m disappointed.

A two month interval
absorbing my mortality

has left me desiring nothing more
than the next question.

I throw my wheat pennies,
calculate my corporeal future ………… struggle with ‘calculate’ – it may be the right term, but it hits the wrong note, for me.
                                                    what about "record"?

in the broken or unbroken
lines of a scribbled hexagram:

I find myself in a ravine. …………….. I think you need to unpack this a bit. I keep wondering if the ‘ravine’ is from an I Ching text, or your own personal metaphor.
I must follow it to the end,            

I will confess I lifted both the ravine metaphor and the dragons blood from the I Ching, I don't know if that counts as plagiarism, I'm not sure.  In some ways it feels like it, but I'm using them in completely different ways than the Ching does, and they are the heart of the poem for me.  So if it is, I might as well take this poem out and shoot it (sorry....been watching Deadwood).

filling the low places
until I can move on.

Beyond the ravine a meadow …….same problem as with ‘ravine’
where dragons have fought.

I step over the splashes
of yellow and black blood

to the shore of a lake
to where a mountain struggles

with Heaven, and the question
of the next second. …………… not sure how well the repeat of ‘question’ works, but losing the mountain’s struggle was too much!
                                           i'll try to work the mountain back in.

I close the book and shuffle
into the nephrologist’s office.

Hi again Knot,

Thanks for having a go at my revision.   A few notes above.  

TqB 

for what it's worth, I don't think it's plagiarism to use ideas in new ways, even if the words are the same.  For me the ravine metaphor works well for your personal journey.  The meadow is a little harder to parse but I read a lot of poems and rarely understand all of what is written.  Even the best poem is not going to be read the same by all people.  How about 'devine' instead of calculate or record?
Please don't shoot the poem.  It's messy, and cliche for a Texan.
bryn