Breakage

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, ends the year with a poem by Mary Oliver, "Breakage."

Oliver was an American poet known for her deeply insightful and accessible work focused on nature, the human experience, and the contemplative life. A Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, she drew heavily on her childhood in Ohio and her later life in Provincetown, Massachusetts, finding in the natural world a source of wonder, healing, and profound connection. Her poetry often features vivid imagery of animals, plants, and landscapes, exploring themes of amazement, mortality, and the “connection between soul and landscape.”

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 27 years in Psychiatric Times in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is an instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. His latest book is Tender Fences.