Vox Populi
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Steven Ratiner: Fathering
After the stroke, when language
froze over in his throat, he had a hard time
with the snow–– He couldn’t say,
and the sky wouldn’t stop saying––
We went walking, and the tracks
in our wake–– And the cardinal-
red calligraphy scribbled between trees––
And the ticking like Morse across hat brim––
And the time I was certain his hiss
was about to coalesce into Steven––
And the dream I kept having: moon-
slick trail rising between birch ribs, breath
becoming smoke, ink becoming breath––
Writing these words across the page––
And even before the sentence is complete,
the footprints filling up with white––
~~~~
Copyright 2025 Steven Ratiner. From Grief’s Apostrophe (Beltway Editions, 2025).
Steven Ratiner has appeared in Parnassus, Agni, Hanging Loose, Poet Lore, Plume and Salamander. He is the former poetry book critic for the Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor. Ratiner was recently elected as the new President of the New England Poetry Club, one of America’s oldest poetry associations.
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Yes, a sad-making subject, yet the poem is beautifully light-handed and strangely playful
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Thanks, Miriam!
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Wow! Too close. But sometimes pain reminds you you are still alive. Thank you.
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So beautiful and sad. Love.
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Well, I can’t imagine a more eloquent evocation of the loss of…eloquence. Superb.
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I agree, Syd. The poem is elegant.
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Made my day!
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Isn’t it great?
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One long sentence filled with pauses and breaks— much like the attempts to recover from a grave disease, or the grief that transforms the ways we communicate about loss in those we love— as in Ratiner’s other poem “Typos,” we read here one person’s brave attempt to show us connecting language in the breach—here in the broken, but living, loving communication with his father—there in cancer’s typos to a different loving’s grieving.
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This is such a wonderful poem. And I second the invitation to look up Steven Ratiner’s “Typo”!
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Thanks, Martha!
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What a wonderful poet catching the inane, confused silence of the mind’s implosion. My father lost the ability to swallow, and made that the end for himself, as if he’d chosen to finish a job he’d started, as if the stroke signalled work needed done.
Be sure to read “Typos” in the poet’s little anthology included below. We’ve got pure artistry in this metier on our hands.
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Thanks, Sean. Your comments in this space are always so brilliant. I’m amazed by you.
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