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NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
Winter 2022
2021 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST BY KELLY JONES
Borrowed Light We’re made of star stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.—Carl Sagan the burning parts of us, thirsty for light look to the stars to tell us who we might be but it is the darkness that tells us who we are you and i are cinders of stars, children of darkness and light all we know, and will know, is debris before memory forgotten worlds remembered on our fingertips our breath, the pearled grass, the flocked wing of a luna moth dancing towards the shadowed moon all borne from familiar darkened ashes we see ourselves in the red-shifted, old ones glowing like periods in a comma sky plumped, fading to black, meaningless no craters, or explosions, or universal truths just the remains of complete incompletion there will be more nights to borrow but never as many as before before the days and nights became shadows in the bottom of our cups before we mortgaged the sky for a ceiling with lead stars before we learned a simple truth darkness follows all light
KELLY JONES is an Arts Education Coordinator for Columbus County Schools. He lives in Tabor City, NC. A member of the A.R. Ammons Poetry Contest Committee, North Carolina’s longest running student poetry contest, his works have appeared in Flying South and Kakalak.
