MOONS OF GRIEF

There are moons that orbit Grief;they are, finally, an escape off that sorry planet.The moons are dumpy and irregularand resemble rotating potatoesbut they are beautiful in their scarred, pocked,imperfect way, turning on their ellipticthrough roaring blackness.When you finally reach the moonthat you’ll make yours, namedafter the Roman God of Sadness,that view of the distant planetwrapped in veils of cloud will seem a comfort,although for a long while you’ll still describe itas one might describe a wound.____Kim Roberts is the author of four books of poems, including To the South Pole, forthcoming Fall 2014 from Broadkill Press, a book written in the voice of Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott.  She is editor of Beltway Poetry Quarterly and the anthology Full Moon on K Street: Poems About Washington, DC (Plan B Press, 2010), and co-editor of Delaware Poetry Review and the web exhibit DC Writers’ Homes.  Roberts is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Humanities Council of Washington, and the DC Commission on the Arts, and has been a writer-in-residence at 14 artist colonies.  Her website: http://www.kimroberts.org.