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"...But tonight I’m twenty years and two hundred leagues from the sea, her painting suddenly a family portrait—weather-beaten me in the middle with worried-window-eyes..."
POETRY OF THE TIMES
-from the painting “Fish Houses, Monhegan Island” by Sylvia Alberts
I remember watching Sylvia paint
three rough pine buildings raised
on stilts, each with a wide ramp
to roll catch through a yawning door,
their floors soaked pink and green
with fluids spilled from prey, a Skull
and Crossbones flapping the pole.
But tonight I’m twenty years
and two hundred leagues from the sea,
her painting suddenly a family portrait—
weather-beaten me in the middle
with worried-window-eyes,
door contorted as Munch’s scream,
my wife sharing our dark inner wall,
with her outside clapboards lit yellow
by summer sun, our teenage daughter
a detached building without an entrance,
eyes measuring a changing tide.
And with one slow blink my reality shifts
back to pandemic winter, the painting
at rest on the mantle, choices made
long ago drifted full circle, daughter,
husband, and grandchildren beached
back home, our sheltered-in-place family
sprawled around the fireplace, lost
in a recording of Treasure Island,
Captain Flint perched on Long John Silver’s
shoulder and squawking X marks the spot!,
my gaze refocused on gold doubloons
with familiar faces spilled at my feet.
Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 23 years in Psychiatric TimesTM in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. ❒