The New Suicide Barrier

I’m idling on the parking garage roof,

February sky a grey body bag,

the Berkshires’ stark catalog

of snow-covered maples and oaks

standing solemn and silent and cold,

Mount Greylock still posing as Moby Dick.

My wife waits in the ER five stories below,

black-ice-fractured wrist, pins placed,

arm in a cast, ready for discharge.

And I’m admiring the new suicide barrier,

a black net woven strong enough

to catch a whale, my inner library

flashing on ten thousand suicide risk

assessments I’ve made without a miss,

yet relieved the net’s in place, just in case

I ever jump to the wrong conclusion.

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.