If You Ask Me My Name

POETRY OF THE TIMES

If you ask me my name

I will say healer, priest, arrogant crow

costumed in white, reflecting moon.

My name is scared and distant

and sometimes too tired to care.

I am death’s reluctant lover,

a child’s guide, mother, father,

hero and fool. And if you like it simple,

doctor will do.

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