Video
Coming of Age
Author(s):
"... unconscious as hope that we sense around us now borne back into the earth..."
Richard Berlin shares poetry from his mentor, poetry editor, and friend, Barry Sterlieb.
Sternlieb's full poem "Coming of Age" can be found below:
In low sun at the tundra cabin
we feed gray jays by hand.
The kitchen is stocked
and water hauled.
Anything undone can wait.
It’s good to see ourselves
as no one else, up here alone,
higher than quiet can say.
Late sky deepens, but light
covers ground, still on the move
past alder and spruce, fragile
muskeg, and staggered peaks.
With blue precision, matter
comes of age in small offerings
which seem to realize life
like a wild mother
who even before she prods
the blind cub to nurse
speaks to it in a secret tongue,
sudden sounds escaping her
unconscious as hope
that we sense around us now
borne back into the earth.
Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 23 years in Psychiatric TimesTM in a column called “Poetry of the Times.” He is instructor in psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA.
