Richard M. Berlin, MD

Poetry of The Times September 2009

My life as a poet changed dramatically in 1999 when Psychiatric Times founder John L. Schwartz, MD, and editor Christine Potvin decided to include my poems as a monthly column in Psychiatric Times. With the creation of “Poetry of the Times,” I experienced a tremendous jolt of artistic energy, a sense of affirmation, and a huge boost in confidence. Writing the column continues to propel my poetry 10 years later.

All year long they gather on this outcropcarved by wind and water into the flankof Lenox Mountain. They arrive on foot,on road bikes and air-conditioned SUVs

“Is it wise to stay on my pill?I know the question may seem inane.”I’ll answer since you’ve paid your bill.

His hand is a farmer’s hand, nails outlined with crescents of black earth, skin calloused, tough as a paw.

My mentors taught me anonymity,to be a blank screen, to reflectand hear the space betweenmy patients’words and their sighs,

Poetry of the Times, Bad Debts 47-year-old insurance salesman,depressed, alcoholic came ineight times, once with his wife.

Almost midnight and pissed off at my partnerwho left early again to rescue her drunkdriving husband, leaving me to work upthe O.D. who wants to leave against my orders.

One minute she's breathing room air and the next you're barking orders at a team wheeling in a crash cart. You review signs and symptoms you missed, the rough rhythm of her heart before she coded. You want to believe your reasoning was as elegant as a glass filled with cabernet, and you want to forget the bottle you imagine resting on a tray table at forty thousand feet, ready to tumble when the captain announces the plane is diving for an unscheduled stop. But I don't need images of air disasters to convince you doctors live somewhere between reason and panic: just flip open your laryngoscope, visualize the vocal chords, and forget you have fifteen seconds to thread the tube before the breathless body on the bed turns blue.

Another day without timeto write: patients call in crisis,apple trees need stakes,cord wood waits to be stacked,and rows of pink-topped turnipsremain buried in half-frozen earth.

After I slippedmy finger inside and feltdeath’s rough stoneI knew I should grantthe old man’s wish:“Just cut my toenails.”Down on my kneesI admired them, thickas a silver dollar,long and curved asthe shofar, the ram’s hornJews blow on judgment day.And I was dressed in whitelike Yeshua, Jesus, my favoriteJew, a healer I knewwould have been downon his knees with me,worshipping the beautyof an old man’s body.

When I started out in medicine,before I married and beforeI had written a single poem,I read your poetry like a hiker

Northwest light, pine trees and open sea,a pair of eagles circling Manana Island,the Laura B gliding into harbor,picking up mail and passengers for the tripinshore, the sound of the sea poundinggranite cliffs, cries of ravens and gulls,one last summer fly buzzing at the window,a room arrayed with easels, drying racks,brushes and brooms, the smell of spirits

Poetry of the times

Poetry of the Times

Poetry of the Times

Poetry of the Times

Poetry of the Times

Poetry of the Times

Poetry of the Times

Poetry of the Times

Poetry of the Times

Daydreaming

Dandelions

Poetry of the Times

Poetry of the Times