Touch

I remember the first time my fingers

burrowed the swamp where belly joins leg

to feel an artery throb. I was so scared by the sweat

and scars I wanted to call in sick, wanted to call

my mother and cry. But when I finally learned

to feel everything, I became a psychiatrist

who touches nothing but a patient’s hand

at the first meeting and the final good bye—

so different from the priest I watched tonight

at Confirmation, how he held the smooth curve

of each student’s head with his jeweled fingers,

charged them with Holy Spirit, an open palm

pressed to a cheek, his touch so fearless, so certain.

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.