Richard M. Berlin, MD

"My nephew, may his wildest dreams come true, confronted by his parents with his teenage grades shot back, Those are not my grades; immediate, definitive, assured."

"I want to jog down to the river & make it my bed—I want to walk its muddy banks & make me a withdrawal..."

"And then I understood everything..."

"What they taught in school was not what we needed, and what we needed (they said) could not be conveyed."

"This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost."

"What they taught in school was not what we needed, and what we needed (they said) could not be conveyed..."

"childhood remembrances are always a drag if you’re Black..."

"I found him on the porch that morning, sipping cold coffee, watching a crow..."

"Tonight their eyes meet with the spirit of sacred music, her body held between his legs like a cello, one hand stroking her neck, his arm curled around her waist."

"Tonight their eyes meet with the spirit of sacred music..."

"Even the smallest insects are singing, vibrating their entire bodies, tiny violins of longing and desire. We were made for song."

"My sons, daughters, young lovers and friends. I don’t know them."

"What we did to the trees, what we did to the earth, we did to our sons, to our daughters..."

"Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise..."

"He slaps a chest film on the light box and hooks a bleary intern: Tell me, doctor, what is the shape of this child’s ears?"

"Fifteen seconds, thirty, a minute of silence, sweat weeps from the intern’s forehead..."

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

"As Saint Francis put his hand on the creased forehead of the sow, and told her in words and in touch blessings of earth on the sow..."

"White roses, tiny and old, flare among thorns by the barn door..."

"As my daughter and I rehearse for the interview, I assure her no one asked me the cookie question..."

"Maybe the question is a test to uncover applicants who crumble under pressure, or a tactic to learn how much dough the future doctor hopes to earn..."

"It all depends on the child’s arrival..."

"The jackrabbit is a mild herbivore grazing the desert floor, quietly abridging spring..."

"There are a million birds in this city I hadn’t heard till now, each of them tuning their instruments, each of them singing, I am alive."

"I feel I’ve known him a long time, familiar as red in the maple outside or the smell of leather on my father’s skin..."

"And I feel closer to him than 50 minutes should allow, a puzzled sensation, I’ve known him all my life..."

"He says that even when he’s driving to the mall in his Isuzu Trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them Like a boiling Jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels Buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds Of the thick satin quilt of America.."

"The moon used to be on Zoloft, before trying Prozac, before adding Klonopin to her lunar chemistry."

"That life is real and if you can survive it, well, survive it well with love and art and meaning given where meaning’s scarce."

"All morning I did the work I love. At noon I lay down with my mate. It might have been otherwise."