Poetry

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

"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."

"Tell him I’m sorry I still owe him money..."

"$240. 47-year-old insurance salesman, depressed, alcoholic came in eight times, once with his wife."

"Doctors in their lonely rounds, Poets with their sacred sounds, Human kindness that abounds shout, nothing stops the spring."

"Was this what Rome felt like toward the end? When the colosseums filled with gladiators stirred the masses into a frenzy."

"All redeeming Nature knows, You cannot stop the spring."

A psychiatrist reflects on the challenges we weather and the enduring search for hope and unity.

"Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful."

"I guessed heart failure. The answer was pneumonia."

"I stood by her side, stunned when her breathing stopped..."

"Suddenly, in every tree, an unseen nest where a mountain would be."

"Connect me to all children, Under undue distress all ‘round the world, Shaping the future of our warring lands..."

"Driving the Garden State Parkway to New York, I pointed out two crows to a woman who believed crows always travel in threes..."

"She walks in beauty, like the night, Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright, Meet in her aspect and her eyes..."

"It is the winter of chest pain and snow, all the drunks smashed through the ER doors..."

"When she steps onto the front porch, sun shimmies through the tips of her hair, the V of her legs, fans out like wings under her arms..."

Explore the theme of mortality and the fleeting nature of time in a poem inspired by Stoic philosophy and personal reflection.

"No matter, Hattie: It’s a long, beautiful walk into that flower-smothered standing ovation, so go on and make them wait."

"What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?"

"In my poem, says another, I can forget I am forgotten. Now I understand being misunderstood..."

"I begin by remembering my hours as a patient..."

"Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on..."

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world..."

A psychiatrist reflects on the New Year and its potential...

"This is the moment my therapist would cross his legs, look into my eyes, and wait for me to reveal something."

"They don't teach the talking treatment anymore..."