Richard M. Berlin, MD

"She takes them gently from my hands, scrunches her brow, studies their loneliness..."

"Down valley a smoke haze, Three days heat, after five days rain..."

"I can still hear my patient shriek..."

"While I watch the artist paint, I imagine him in the time of plague..."

"...now i forget what day it is and still feel i’m running out of time..."

"...Night is a room darkened for lovers..."

"I stood shivering in the dark kitchen, thinking about that word, ventilator..."

Reading books and journals, charting treatment plans to help patients find an Eden of their own.

"You’re a poet, aren’t you?"

"...So far the days keep coming. Seize the day gently as if you loved her.”

"My hands grown tired, my head weighed down with dreams..."

"My love, I am pledging to this republic, for however long we stand..."

“...sweetness comes as if on loan, stays just long enough to make sense of what it means to be alive, then returns to its dark source.”

How do poetry and medicine interact and relate? One doctor shares his journey.

"... unconscious as hope that we sense around us now borne back into the earth..."

Reform school, a place where workers smoked with the boys, a place where fathers were AWOL and mothers begged us to save their sons.

A bear under the snow turns over to yawn. It's been a long, hard rest.

So I sit on the edge, wagging my feet above the abyss. Tonight the moon will be in my lap...

"The world was immaculate, new..."

As soon as you begin to ask the question, Who loves me?, you are completely screwed, because the next question is How Much?

"...remember this one life is a gift each of us was handed and told to open..."

My life pasted on his wall to analyze, a flash of insight came to me: Training had begun.

“...the life thing in us that will not let us die...”

Hospital food has the reputation for not being very restorative...

And Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water...

"... laboring to transform death to praise, never wearying, never once losing faith."

How has COVID-19 given us a heightened appreciation for each moment?

As the COVID-19 battle continues, reflecting on successes against viruses like AIDS may serve as a hopeful reminder.

"...inhuman forces hard at work in their own time and place..."

Walking on water might just be possible...