Heart Filter Poem by Renee Podunovich

There is light inside of every thing.

If I were a transparency,
a vapor, a mist, a pane of glass,
it would travel from its universal source
straight through me
and shine upon you.
You would feel its warmth.

The shine of the sun blazing, burning, glowing yellow
has journeyed all this way
travelling upon, yet contained within
space enormous and thick.
Travels a wide open course
until it is intercepted by the manifest world-
caught in the web of living things:
The filter of the branches of the Redwoods,
catches the light in its airy net
so that it reaches the ground in small patches-
as if these diffuse rays are just enough
for fern, shamrock and coastal jay,
as if this canopy protects us
from being utterly consumed by the searing
sun passion love fire whose combustion
warms us from the inside
and out,
whose effusion from source into matter
is a miniscule point
exploding with no limits
other than the filter of our hearts
and this canopy of silent leaves.

Light falls like snow
suspended in the air
reflected on droplets of mist
in filaments, figments, facets,
floating, flittering, flying,
hovers upon the breath of the ancient forest community-
a glimmering reflection of life before the last ice age,
its secret revealed in the pattern of this illumination,
every day writing the memoir of itself.

from 'If There is a Center, No One Knows Where It Begins', Art Juice Editions (2008) , first edition