FEBRUARY 2026: Grant Moore

"each morning rise you're gone again."

For February's Maryland Artist of the Month, Artists from Maryland is featuring Grant Moore! Below, you will find two of his poems, and an artist's statement.

Grant Moore is a software engineer with a background in mathematics and physics. His poetry often uses formal constraints to explore themes of loss, memory, and the structures we build to understand the world. He lives in Cumberland, Maryland.

Larksong

at least the larks remember songs
each morning rise you're gone again.

the mourning veils of scattered throngs
depart your wake without amen.

the men who take your parts away
forget to take my silent heart.

they leave a lily black bouquet
whose petals fingers tear apart.

and when i stand, the thoughts remain,
the stems are bare and nothing's changed.

the birds begin their last refrain
as though they knew and prearranged.

if nothing else, their voice belongs;
at least the larks remember songs.

//

Eulogy

mound of the earth, the funeral pyre,
sermons of fire, infernos of oak.

burning of briars, spiraling higher,
chorus expired and softly I spoke:

nothing is left, but cinders remain,
warm to the touch, as memories fade.

look to the thrashing showers of rain,
mourn with the hissing coils arrayed.

pound for the taking, body of ash,
weight of the flame, transmuted to wind.

thundering void, in symbols that flash,
scavenging clouds, futures descend.

weep with the water, falling to feet,
honor your father, drink of his heat.

//

My creative work exists at the intersection of rigorous formal structure and the ineffable nature of human experience. With a background in mathematics and physics, I have always been fascinated by the limitations of description—how we attempt to map the chaotic reality of the world onto the ordered grid of language. I view the poem not merely as an expression of emotion, but as a solution to a specific "context problem": how to capture the weight of a memory when the reality of the subject is gone.

In pieces like "Eulogy" and "Larksong," I utilize the strict constraints of the sonnet to contain grief that otherwise feels boundless. I am interested in the "syntax" of loss—how the iambic pulse attempts to impose a heartbeat on the silence that follows death. My writing explores the tension between the "is" of existence and the "was" of memory, acknowledging that while language may ultimately be a circle of symbols pointing only to other symbols, it is the only vessel we have to hold what remains.