A Small Needful Fact

Author(s):

"...he put gently into the earth some plants which, most likely, some of them, in all likelihood, continue to grow..."

Any Good Poem

Richard Berlin, MD, shares Ross Gay's poem "A Small Needful Fact," which is based on the events of July 17, 2014, when Eric Garner, a 43-year-old African American man, was killed by Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City Police Department officer, who put Garner in a prohibited chokehold while arresting him.

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 25 years in Psychiatric Times® in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, Massachusetts. His latest book is Freud on My Couch.