Richard M. Berlin, MD

"$240. 47-year-old insurance salesman, depressed, alcoholic came in eight times, once with his wife."

"Doctors in their lonely rounds, Poets with their sacred sounds, Human kindness that abounds shout, nothing stops the spring."

"Was this what Rome felt like toward the end? When the colosseums filled with gladiators stirred the masses into a frenzy."

"Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful."

"I guessed heart failure. The answer was pneumonia."

"I stood by her side, stunned when her breathing stopped..."

"Suddenly, in every tree, an unseen nest where a mountain would be."

"Driving the Garden State Parkway to New York, I pointed out two crows to a woman who believed crows always travel in threes..."

"She walks in beauty, like the night, Of cloudless climes and starry skies; And all that’s best of dark and bright, Meet in her aspect and her eyes..."

"It is the winter of chest pain and snow, all the drunks smashed through the ER doors..."

"When she steps onto the front porch, sun shimmies through the tips of her hair, the V of her legs, fans out like wings under her arms..."

"No matter, Hattie: It’s a long, beautiful walk into that flower-smothered standing ovation, so go on and make them wait."

"What did I know, what did I know of love’s austere and lonely offices?"

"In my poem, says another, I can forget I am forgotten. Now I understand being misunderstood..."

"I begin by remembering my hours as a patient..."

"Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on..."

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world..."

"This is the moment my therapist would cross his legs, look into my eyes, and wait for me to reveal something."

"They don't teach the talking treatment anymore..."

"Here the body’s art conspires with destruction..."

"Each wound contains its own beauty..."

"Who would be a turtle who could help it?"

"The season pivots and bends to the darkening north..."

"The headlines said Well-Loved American Foods Resisted Arrest, Failed to Comply, and Were Delicious While Black."

"I say Good Morning! and he studies me in my white coat, like skin lesion he has seen only once in a textbook."

"After each lap around the circular hall the aides smile, Hello Doctor!"

"The national day had dawned."

"I am overtired, Of the great harvest I myself desired."

"...a falling man falling beside a falling apple could also be described as an apple and a man at rest..."

"I imagine an ossuary blooming in my gut, a stone well of tiny bones, ancestors tunneling through the cartilage, though of course I know this is impossible: ancestors are supposed to stay dead."