Borrowed Light

2021 JAMES APPLEWHITE POETRY PRIZE FINALIST

BY KELLY JONES

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.

Cosmos (mixed media on panel, 12x12) by Rand Kramer

the great ones warn that everything dies, dims, becomes what it never was but you and i must become what is left when stars die pull the night in all around us and stick it under our jackets draw our own blackened constellations our own shadowed creations thread the moonlight through a needle and piece together all the remnants of night we can find

we may have borrowed our light from the stars but the darkness is ours to keep.

RAND KRAMER was born in Maryland, where he earned a BA at The Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He spent many years in Northern Virginia before moving to Asheville, NC, in 2017, where he lives and works in his studio in the River Arts District. After a thirty-year career in digital design, he redirected his creativity to fine art. His work is located in public and private collections throughout the Washington, DC, metro area, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and California. He is represented by Citron Gallery in Asheville.