Richard M. Berlin, MD

A poem titled Loves by American poet Stephen Dunn inspired me to write a poem about everything I love about my work as a doctor.

Why poetry? As the great Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai said, “When words fail, that’s when poetry begins.”

Nurses are on the front line in the care of COVID-19 patients, and for many years Dr Berlin has admired and resonated with the poetry of nurse practitioner Cortney Davis. Here: a recitation of two of her poems.

Richard Berlin, MD, recites "COVID-19," by Dr Chris Fitzpatrick. It is a series of haikus strung together to highlight the many moments in hospitals that are happening everywhere in the world. This. Very. Moment.

His widow sues. Five night-sweat-years later, our colleague wins in court, because he has good documentation.

I read Dear Provider in a letter from a health care company. Provider is a fine word, and I’ve always felt proud to provide for my family-but the company doesn’t know guys from Jersey are sensitive.

A phone rings on stage like a flashback and we return to our fantasy that characters can die and revive, that the show must go on . . .

The past is prologue riding close behind. Give up your practice? And do what instead? Psychiatrists are not the retiring kind!

Our daughter’s first day of Med School ten years ago, computer charged, a career choice . . .

I imagine Emma on a winter night, an eight-year-old curled fireside in a wing chair, proving her skill with weeping willows...

They sulk and swear when I say, “Sorry, no Jollies,” tune out when I lecture about sugar, acid, and tooth decay- they’ve known sweetness and want more....

My musician patient in a fetal curl, Tchaikovsky’s “Meditation” plays an endless loop against this climate controlled conspiracy of monitors and machines...

The moment the maestro flicks his baton, an orchestra thunders and the pianist suffers a stroke. But everyone plays on...

A ghostly glow frames the face of a man with nothing to hide...

Always ask the name of their dog.

They ask me to sign the moment before my poetry reading and I comply...

We fled the computer room like inmates after lightning fries the prison fence. Then we rounded with nurses who knew the doses and what made patients moan...

Do I have to speak? I know you know...

I’ve been waiting for one of those nine bare-breasted sisters to land by my side and inspire a sonnet...

The Monarch’s cortex, head of a pin, contains maps of Earth and heavens within...

They love to talk like air traffic controllers: “Angle the spinal needle 20 degrees and push gently toward the midline.” And though I don’t say “Roger”...

Homeless men in Chinatown doorways flick cigarettes and cough, while a dozen nurses forge into Beach Street winter...

Covering for a colleague I begin to startle after the tenth call-med refill requests, side effect questions, and suicidal thoughts...

Rotten teeth, dirt creased face, he’d come in for a hot and a cot and collapsed with DTs...

All summer southwest wind stirs the weeping willows the way my breath disturbs a settled life when I whisper the cancer diagnosis...

Soaked in Mexican sunshine he’s powered back to the Berkshires, all the world’s yellow compressed into a firecracker...

I wanted this to be like a fairy tale walk in the woods before kids, careers, blood clots and bone mets...

Green hills patched with April, snow and I’ve chosen to celebrate. with a full slate of patients.

After he juggles three chainsaws and spins twenty plates balanced on sticks, he moves to the grand finale: ten Bowler hats tossed across the arena and stacked on the ringmaster’s head.

We wrote through the night, between moonlight and morning, admissions and discharges, wrote when phones stopped ringing, when pagers stopped paging. We were raw, opening ourselves to chaos and mystery...