J Am Acad Psychiatry Law 34:1:105-109 (2006)
Copyright © 2006 by the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.
Forensic Reflections Through Poetry
Diane H. Schetky, MD
Dr. Schetky is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Vermont College of Medicine at Maine Medical Center, and Examiner for Maine State Forensic Service, Rockport, ME.
Address correspondence to: Diane H. Schetky, MD, PO Box 220, Rockport, ME 04856. E-mail: dschetky{at}adelphia.net
One of my sons, a writer, urged me to broaden my audience and turn my forensic experiences into fiction instead of writing yet another book on forensic psychiatry. I gave it a try, but my arthritic thumbs protested. Poetry with its economy of words and motion then became the obvious medium. I had never written any poetry until a few years ago, and found it very gratifying. The endless play with words and quick resolutions, in contrast to the elephantine gestations of books, appealed to me.
My work as an examiner for the Maine State Forensic Service involves a lot of driving to far-flung courthouses. The trip to Aroostook County was 10 hours round trip, but provided a window of opportunity for observations and reflections. Writing poetry has become a means of processing some of the vicarious traumas I encounter in my work and allows me to view them from many perspectives. It has also helped me deal with personal losses and those I encounter in the course of my work as a Hospice volunteer at Maine State Prison and in the community. I hope this sampling of forensic poetry may inspire the muse in readers of the Journal.
Flames
- Randall Roop went up in flames
- Amid the charred and twisted metal
- Of the trailer he called home as his
- Junked cars bore witness to his fate
- Four volunteer firemen delayed by
- Winter storm struggle to bend their
- Hoses stiffened by arctic air and ice
- But arrive too late to alter his fate
- Randall Roop lies in a palace of ice
- His humble home transformed into
- Fantastic apparitions such as he
- Might have seen while on a toot
- Tongues of fire leap to the sky
- As if to warm the sweep of night
- While Randall Roop grows cold
- His coffee brandy at his side.
Papillon
- An errant Monarch butterfly
- Alights with grace on a
- Plum colored coneflower,
- In this not quite barren yard
- Indifferent to their crimes, he gratefully
- accepts the fruit of inmates' labors
- A yard is a yard, as long as
- You are a butterfly
- As quickly as he alighted, he is gone
- Having touched persons less
- Fortunate with hope and
- The promise of freedom.
The Glove Compartment
- The police search through
- Looking for clues of
- Who she was and
- How she got there
- An old lottery ticket
- With numbers she picked,
- A purple schrunchy with a few
- Red hairs that still cling
- One small bottle of cheap perfume,
- One unpaid parking ticket,
- Thirteen cents in change and a
- Pack of Menthol Lights
- A greasy napkin from
- Dunkin' Donuts with
- Directions to Amy's house
- Scrawled upon it
- A broken fortune cookie
- With hatched fortune beside it
- Offering assurance that
- "You will soon be famous"
- Such is the detritus of
- Her short life as
- She lies dead in her car,
- The victim of a homicide.
Sunday Hospice Vigil
- I sit as a stranger in
- The house of a man of God
- He has left to tend his flock
- Trusting me with his dying wife
- His tidy house speaks of a life
- Well ordered and caring
- With God's word hanging
- From each and every wall
- Yet, I am unsettled by the
- Fifties' décor, knickknacks of old
- And death-defying plastic flowers
- At standoff with the passage of time
- But it is the absence of any print,
- Other than spiritual books or Bible,
- That startles and causes me to realize that
- Some men live by God's word alone
- Christmas cards lay still unopened
- And stillness is repeatedly broken
- By the chiming of a clock, as death
- Hovers like an early morning fog.
Aroostook County Unfolding
- Dense fog enfolds me as
- I head south on U.S. Route One
- Following on blind faith
- The distant lights of a truck
- While scanning shoulders
- For early morning moose
- By Presque Isle, bathroom and
- Kitchen lights signal that dawn
- Is on its way and the harvest beckons
- Soon, I can make out roadside stands
- With pumpkins, new potatoes,
- Yukon Gold and a few stray chickens
- Pickups and tractors punctuate the
- Vast, rolling fields and Full
- Gospel churches keep these
- Families from straying too far
- A sign for Bert's Salvage suggests
- That more than souls get saved up here
- The landscape shifts to young pine and
- Tamarack then Houlton's strip malls as
- I turn onto the beginning of Interstate 95
- A color guard of deciduous trees still
- Muted by fog is my constant companion for
- The next two hours on this barren highway
- Flocks of crows hop from road kill
- To safety with alacrity and agility
- As I disrupt their early morning
- Routine, the avian equivalent of
- Morning coffee, donuts and
- The latest gossip at Tim Hortons
- The vistas are few and the promised view of
- Mt. Katahdin is not to be seen today. I am
- Left reviewing yesterday's trial in Caribou
- And the weight carried by the judge who must
- Sift through days of testimony and decide the
- Fate of a man charged with killing his father.
