I am a physician by training, but a poet by passion.  I discovered the healing properties of poems as I dealt with my mother’s Alzheimer’s disease, my father’s death from cancer, the suicide of a family friend, and the suffering and incredible bravery that I witnessed in my medical practice.  Poetry provided a vehicle that took me to places that logic wouldn’t go.  It became a way of understanding the incomprehensible, both in life and in medicine.  I now prescribe poetry PRN (“as needed”), but warn that “it may hurt a little.” 

            While practicing medicine for a quarter century, my interest in writing never waned.  I began honing my craft by attending creative writing workshops and college courses.  At first writing solely for myself and my family, I was surprised and gratified when my poems won contests and were published in a variety of literary journals and magazines. I’ve since published more than five dozen poems, and been invited to read my work at the George Bush Presidential Library in Texas, the Akron Art Museum in Ohio, and Eckerd College in Florida. 

            Although my book, Heart Murmurs, is a work of fiction, any resemblance to actual events or persons is not entirely coincidental. My poetry is peopled with friends, family, and patients who live in the heartland and in my heart.