Every Job Has a First Day

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, shares the poem "Every Job Has a First Day," by Rebecca Gayle Howell. Howell is an accomplished poet, translator, editor, and educator. She is currently an associate professor of Poetry & Translation at the University of Arkansas MFA program and a faculty member at Sewanee Writers' Conference MFA program. She has also served as the poetry editor of The Oxford American from 2014 to 2024.

In this poem, the “job” appears to be rescuing minnows from a dry river bed.

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.