"The New Suicide Barrier"

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, shares his poem “The New Suicide Barrier,” which was featured in the January 2026 issue of Psychiatric Times.

The parking garage roof next to the hospital’s emergency department offers a great view of the Berkshire’s mountains, including Mount Greylock, the highest mountain in Massachusetts at 3489 feet. Herman Melville had a similar view of Mount Greylock from his writing chair at Arrowhead, his Pittsfield, MA home. And he wrote that a snow covered Mount Greylock looked “very like a whale.” Here is Berlin’s poem while gazing at that view.

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.