The Night We Heard Ella Sing

-for Steve Bierman, MD

The night we heard Ella sing

“Summertime” our living was easy—

two months camped on a Malibu field

with postcard views of Point Dume

and Zuma Beach, sun bleaching out

a year of anatomy lab’s stench,

bronzing our bodies clean,

time slowed to the tide’s rhythm

and the surf’s roar, each day closed

by a Great Horned Owl’s silent

fly-by at dusk, the shore’s profile

as foggy as the arc of our future careers.

The night we heard Ella sing “Summertime”

we were a year deep in the Med School Blues,

fire hosed by an ocean of facts, deadened

by dark lecture halls and multiple choice

exams we could only pass or fail.

Yet we remained bold enough

to sneak down to Hollywood Bowl’s

front row, so close we could count

the beads of sweat on Ella’s forehead,

watch her caress the mic the way

we had wished to be caressed

that endless first year, her growls

and moans reminders of pleasures

we had to delay.

The summer we heard Ella sing

you bought a cheap guitar in Tijuana

and strummed “Summertime’s” chords

while we wondered how many healthy years

we would need to repay our sacrificed youth,

moon and stars spinning overhead,

me dreaming of Psychiatry’s quiet couch,

you surfing the ER’s adrenalin swells.

Fifty summers since we heard Ella sing.

Fifty autumns since the alphabet ordered

“Berlin” and “Bierman” to be lab partners,

our lives unfolding into careers

within careers we improvised

like Ella’s scatting, how we found

our ways to rise up singing,

strong wings spread wide,

both of us empowered

to take to the sky.

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 28 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.