The Garden of Eden

Romolo Tavani/AdobeStock

Today when the ground was no longer

too wet to work and the world was all lilac

perfume, I pulled my scuffle hoe hard

through the clay’s crust and heard

the blade scrape metal and earth.

I believed the sound came from nothing

more than a buried beer can tab

I dropped while foraging through

lettuce and sugar peas last spring.

But what surfaced from fresh manure

was my lost wedding band, buried for years

in earth that nurtures Love-Lies-Bleeding,

a ring from a forty-year marriage, rescued

from the filth of paradise, hosed off, shining,

my cracked fingernails caked with dirt.

Dr Berlin has been writing a poem about his experience of being a doctor every month for the past 26 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.