Illustrious for Brief Moments by Renee Podunovich

Illustrious for Brief Moments

 

Today is another chance

            to be fully alive,

            present in the What

            Is —                the light and dark embodied,

                                    the movement from dreaming

                                    to waking dreams — all of it

the same mysterious fabric.

 

Sunrise — Juncos feast at the feeder

cheerful in the chill white, 

light lands on feathers and drifts,

                                    on me at my writing desk,

                                    on you, somewhere —

 

Webs of distance

I won’t write about longing ever again.

I have already wandered that endless path,

followed it to the distant most planets.

                                    

I am here, not there, not anywhere else.

I exist inside the silk lining

            of pockets of snow, softly

elevating me and the winter birds

far far from our summer selves,

                                    stillness, seeds and scattered 

words become

 

dream food.

 

We are held aloft — illustrious — for brief moments

before our feet sink through

to the solid, frozen earth,

dark matter, the underworld

that will once again

birth us at 

sunrise —

(This poem appears in the author's forthcoming chapbook of the same title, available here.) 

Renee Podunovich is a poet and freelance writer living in southwest Colorado. She has three chapbooks of poems: “Illustrious for Brief Moments” (Finishing Line Press, 2020), “Let the Scaffolding Collapse” (Finalist of the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Competition by Finishing Line Press, 2012) and “If There Is a Center No One Knows Where It Begins” (Art Juice Press, 2008).  She is the 2019 Cantor Award winner for the best poem by a Coloradoan in the Fischer Prize awarded by the Telluride Literary Festival. Her poems were nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2010 and 2011.

Renee believes that poetry is a language that encourages us to transcend our constricted sense of self and connect to our essential nature within and the living intelligence of the world around us. Renee facilitates Well Writing: Wordcraft for Discovery, Wholeness & Connection workshops that are designed to use creative writing as a tool for centering, reflecting and for personal growth. Visit Renee's website here, and her blog here. 

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