Mali Mann is a training and supervising analyst at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis (SFCP). She is also an associate supervisor in child and adolescent psychoanalysis at SFCP and is an adjunct professor in psychiatry and behavioral science at Stanford University Medical Center. She recently wrote this poem, titled “Mazandaran, Over the Ocean, Over the Mountain.” Mann has experience in sharing her poetry both through writing in her native language, Farsi, and in English. She is a member of Pegasus Physician at Stanford University, a forum for sharing poetry with other physician poets.
She is the author of poems and papers, including articles on identity formation, shame, and the management of aggression in children.
This very intimate piece captures a beautiful time, place, and mood in words and rhythm. It is a poem of scents, sounds, light, and longing.
Mazandaran, Over the Ocean, Over the Mountain
A land blue, green and goldenMy mother watering red geranium potsMy father spotting ripened melons in the gardenHe fed me sweet, juicy, butter colored slicesThe sun bathing in the Caspian SeaBlinking at me and into the dusk that lingeredA province so vast, so rich and fertileMy Mazandaran how I left you behindAnd yet everything I tell you is trueThe man with the wide eyed girl riding the horseThe little girl who spoke the pony tongueKept her mother in her mind's eyeFelt the bond that keeps its innocence
Sheri Butler Hunt, M.D., is a certified analyst in the adult and child divisions at the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. A published poet and member of TAP's editorial board, she welcomes readers' comments and suggestions at .