The moon is my grief and I its point of orbit.
Someone once suggested that I
might be the moon and not the hungry Earth
holding on.  But no.  I had to disagree.
This planet and its molten core with
its thin skin of ice and green are too familiar.

Its shifting plates and saltwater seas.
Its dark night with a swirl of light.
Van Gogh knew these elements and so do I.
I don the cloak of Earth.  A blue green marble
tired of being played.  I reach for my little moon.

The moon like my grief is constant yet
changing, revealing more, then disappearing.
Full and glaring, secretive and hardly seen.
Grief now gone, now reappearing.  The moon is
more easily tracked but I find both to be unpredictable

despite the charts and calendars I keep at home.
When least expected, there in the blue sky it sits.
A shameless thing in broad daylight, never quite complete,
a little piece gone.  Sometimes just a sliver,
thin crescent left over from a paper-punch hole.
Brush it away.

The moon like my grief has many names.
Man in the Moon, Lady Luna, Flower and Worm, Blood and Blue.
There is a Wolf Moon too.  I think it may cry and howl relentlessly.

The moon is my grief and I a Sisyphus
treading the long track around a demon sun.
I move in perpetuity yoked to that fixed center.
My little moon travels at my side.

But if I were the moon and not the bauble Earth
I would like to keep my one eye open all the time
looking outwards at the long-armed swirling nebulae,
those gaseous galaxies from whence we all come.
I would fling myself from this indentured orbit and not wait
for the slow inchings that science predicts
will eventually pull us apart.

Why must I wait millennia to free myself?

If I were the moon, I would let loose from my earthly tether
and vanish from the skies.  You would not see me night after night,
changing faces and caring for tidal seas, circling
this planet called Earth, companion to life in water and dirt.

If I were the moon searching out a home
I would return to the bosom of the universe,
reuniting with those who came before,
the starry ancestors, the loved ones, the lost ones

While this poem offers no definitive answers it did help me explore my relationship to grief, holding on, letting go, becoming it, the exhaustion of it and the universal longing for our loved ones.  There is no one take-away.  But I hope readers feel the love, possibility and expansiveness that can accompany all of us on our individual journeys.

*****

I have always written to help me process and understand my place in the world.  In the last two years, since the loss of my beloved sister to suicide, reading and writing poetry has helped me deal with the deep grief and complex emotions that flooded my life.  By sharing my thoughts and words, I hope to ignite a spark of recognition and connect with others in this petri dish of life.  I work as a speech therapist and live with my best friend, Benji, the dog.  We both enjoy long walks in the green belt next to our home.