Poetry

A psychiatrist reflects on trivial times...

"Migrants pay for safety. We pay people to believe that what we tell them is true, especially when we have spared them the hardest facts to hold."

"Life is short, though I keep this from my children."

When faced with struggles, stress, and burnout, sometimes the best medicine is simply letting go...

"...my father’s spade saving last year’s mud, a long-tined rake, the swan-neck hoe..."

"Each spring, when earth warms and begs me to open its dark skin, I carry them past flowering apples and pears to the quiet square of garden..."

A psychiatrist reflects on the status quo in light of the most recent tragedy....

Is your card the king of rats? Is your card the queen of roaches?

As we cope with another tragedy, a psychiatrist reflects on the importance of a safe haven...

"I hold a thousand kites in a field loosed from their tethers at once..."

"This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals..."

"By year’s end, brittle with guilt, we hovered over our hollow creation..."

"Under the bludgeonings of chance, My head is bloody, but unbowed."

"I remember perfumes and anxious sweat, who preferred the big leather chair and who liked to hide in the sofa’s corner."

"This isn’t as easy as it seems..."

"There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost... I am helpless."

"I remember sitting like my patients when time expired, entire lives grasped in a 50 minute hour..."

"The dust of snow, From a hemlock tree, Has given my heart, A change of mood..."

“We are a tale of two Americas, searching for humanity to implore unity.”

"By year’s end, brittle with guilt, we hovered over our hollow creation..."

“Bringing us home, To ourselves, Our selves, Our bodies, our shelters…”

A psychiatric reflects on the latest news and remembers Tyre Nichols.

"I wish I could have caught his eye, delivered the silent message that I understood what he had to go through every day to keep the peace..."

“We are oceans, not boats.”

"My mother’s idea of heaven was a pulse, nurses in white spilling light across fields with hurricane lamps, bandage rolls, syringes, pain killers, stethoscopes, pressure cuffs, patella hammers."

“Breathing clouds at every turn, We hold what wisdom we must learn.”

Celebrating 25 years of Poetry of the Times with Richard Berlin, MD!

"And if you like it simple, doctor will do."

"There is no greater loneliness..."

Welcome to 2023, the 25th year of Poetry of the Times with Richard Berlin, MD!