Poetry of the Times

We climbed concrete ramps from the subway’s underground world, up to the grandstand and my first vision of heaven...

spring-time territory, raucous and free as a New Orleans . . . trumpet, my patient locked-in to the wild tune

But old colleagues said . . . the holocaust made him an atheist with a poet's heart, . . . a Jew who loved to stand and chant David's psalms

I pictured him at his waiting room door . . . clutching a chart, catching eyes, . . . calling out a name, bewildered

Here's to the lovely trees of Jersey, my home . . . town streets lined with linden and larch, . . . poplar and elm, flowered locusts scenting

"I place a stethoscope in my ears and listen to the heart when I’ve run out of things to say. . . ."

I'm reviewing a left ventriculography from a man with chest pain, MI ruled out, his wife dead for a post-crash hour...

"A hundred people dancing so hard they’ve thrown off their shoes . . ." Listen to Richard Berlin, MD, recite the poem, "Playing in the Band."

His happiest moment revealed.

In conversation long as summer light, we talked patients and drugs, recited simple prayers of the dying, learned how we both took medicine as a life-long lover . . . and more reflections on a medical school courtship.