Two Crises I Didn’t Train For

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POETRY OF THE TIMES

I can still hear my patient shriek

when a black bear appeared on camera

behind me, circled the rose garden sundial,

and reared up to study one small human

shielded only by a sunroom screen,

three hundred feral pounds of muscle

and claw, almost as frightening

as a virus a tenth of a micron wide.

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, Massachusetts. ❒