To hear Darius Jones tell it, he practically fell into poetry. “I didn’t plan on being a poet, didn’t want to be one,” Jones said. “It just sort of happened. I’m much more at home in prose than poetry, usually. And I was just fooling around at first.”

 

His poetic journey began during the Covid pandemic when he, like the rest of us, was stuck at home and looking for something interesting to fill his days and nights. He grabbed an old pair of binoculars and looked up at the stars one night. He was hooked.

 

“I started with binoculars and saw a lot more than I thought I could from my light-polluted backyard—a nebula, star clusters, an asteroid or two,” Jones said. “Soon, I graduated to astronomical binoculars and then, a telescope.”

 

Jones found himself writing down small snatches of what he saw through the telescope.  “Soon, I had these little snippets, and I thought, ‘Hey! This is poetry. This is haiku!’”

 

Jones organized his hazy, star-based lines into a 24-linked haiku with a narrative thread running through it, and his first poem was born: The King Becomes a Star. He sent it to some friends, got feedback, and refined the lines numerous times before he was satisfied with the end product.

He sent it off to a fantasy magazine, Strange Horizons, and they accepted it on his very first try.

 

“I had to call my friends and tell them: ‘This is NOT how this process usually goes!’” he said.

He’s written dozens of poems since, has had three more published in magazines, and has submitted several more.

 

“I’m waiting to get my fifth poem published—that’ll really show I’m serious about this poetry thing. I do know one thing: I’m not going to stop now.”

 

Darius can be found on clear nights in his backyard with his telescope or, during the day, writing at a local café. He has had several stories and books published. (He was recently part of an authors’ discussion on horror books at Elaine’s Restaurant in Old Town Alexandria, which is a sponsor of this magazine and our Arts & Literature pages.) Learn more about him at dariusjoneswriter.com or follow him on social media @DariusJonesWrit.

Below are a few of his poems, including haikus and a Faiku, which is a short poem in Buddhist tradition, using a 7-8-7 syllable verse.

The ragamuffin

sparrow comes to beg a meal.

Breadcrumbs on pavement.

Cathedral of cloud and light

Lightning that does not touch the earth.

An affair of the heavens.

The fearlessness of

the young may be, after all,

the greatest wisdom.

This life is a book,

which starts and ends in darkness.

But love is the light

which makes it worth living.