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Steven Ratiner has published three poetry chapbooks, and is completing work on three full-length collections. His work has appeared in scores of journals in America and abroad including Parnassus, Agni, Hanging Loose, Poet Lore, Salamander, QRLS (Singapore) and Poetry Australia. He’s also written poetry criticism for The Christian Science Monitor, The San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post. Giving Their Word – Conversations with Contemporary Poets was re-issued in a paperback edition (University of Massachusetts Press) and features interviews with many of poetry’s most important figures. He has taught in the Massachusetts Artist in Residence program for four decades, conducting poetry programs in over 300 schools. Since 2019, he’s been the Poet Laureate for Arlington, Massachusetts; his weekly Red Letter Poems features poets from across Massachusetts and beyond (steven.arlingtonlaureate@gmail.com) This poem was written for his grandson, who is a young citizen of fair Somerville.

Supermoon
(for George Adam Harper)

Steven Ratiner

Not the fat mandala the meteorologists
were touting on the news but

a dime-sized jewel floating beneath us
in the pond’s black skies which

my grandson, nearly two, snatches up
in his small fist.  Opening it slowly –

convinced of what he possesses,
and by what he’s possessed –

he offers me his wet palm.
I kiss the moon there.

— Steven Ratiner

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