Poetry

Einstein's happiest moment revealed.

-for SusanneWe kneeled on the bookstore floortwo students scanning the bodiesof new books, checking outeach other's Principlesof Internal Medicine.Scores of textbooks laterwe're a pair of pagers and missed dinners,companions in sleep-deprived nights.We suffered the long delaybefore our only child while we ranto slashed wrists and ODs,sprinted from half-read journalto school play to board meeting.In conversation long as summer lightwe talked patients and drugs,recited the simple prayers of dying,learned how we both took medicineas a life-long lover.One hushed June evening in mid-lifescented rose and thick with fire-flies,the phone steals her.I sit with my half-filled glass

Needle sticks and night call, Hep B burrowing skin, bad smells, deep wounds, death, dying, dead wood...

A poetry reading by psychiatrist Richard Berlin, MD.

One of the special aspects of practicing in a small community is seeing patients living their lives outside the office.

Two yellow feathers and a skull. . . drop from the sky and fall on the brown . . . scar of trail, a sharp-shinned hawk

Each wound speaks its own language.

A poetry reading by psychiatrist Richard Berlin, MD.

As a consultation liaison psychiatrist, one of his assignments was to work on a renal dialysis unit to determine whether or not a patient was competent to opt out of treatment.

His pager calls. Code Blue. And for no reason at all, he lifts the window and blows a little life back into the world.

We lower a plastic tray on his ribs, as if food can stop the dying: cold potato scooped like a snowball, canned spinach. More in this reading by Richard Berlin, MD.

Our identity as physicians is the foundation for our careers as psychiatrists and the first step in our transition from layperson to doctor takes place in the anatomy lab.

Listen to Richard Berlin, MD, recite one of his poems.

Wild Night, after the cops came to shut the music down, after friends and family were headlights pointed toward home...

"Einstein’s happiest moment...occurred when he realized...a falling man falling...beside a falling apple..."

AUDIO A good apple pie fixes every pain. Your grandmother baked them to be sure you’d know- Cinnamon for heartbreak, cloves for shame . . .

Today when the ground was no longer...

Poetry of the Times--Good Fathers.

Poetry of the Times Our Medical Marriage

We waited for the broken and the burned.

If You Ask Me My Name - Poetry of the Times

Hospital Food - Poetry of the Times

PTSD - Poetry of the Times