I Wish I Held My Father’s Hand

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, shares the poem "I Wish I’d Held My Father’s Hand" by Charles Coe, which tells the story of an incident of racism Coe's father was subjected to on an ordinary day in a drugstore check out during the early 60s.

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 25 years in the Psychiatric Times™ “Poetry of the Times” column. He is instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. His latest book is Freud on My Couch.