Why Married Men Live Longer

POETRY OF THE TIMES

After washing and drying the darks,

I’m left with a pair of unmatched socks,

one pure black, the other almost identical

but decorated with two white stripes

like fog lines marking a road across the toes.

I search the washer for their twins,

spin the dryer bin, hunt the bedroom path

where I’ve hauled laundry for decades,

my wife in bed, eyes locked on her iPad.

I hold up the socks, limp as a mutt’s ears,

and ask her to help me find their mates.

She takes them gently from my hands,

scrunches her brow, studies their loneliness,

catching my eye a moment later when

she smiles and turns one inside out.

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 23 years in Psychiatric Times^TM in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA. ❒