This is why…

This bit of paper that brought me great comfort many months ago when I really needed it, sat in waiting as a bookmark until it found itself to me again today. This pop up poetry just keeps popp’n exactly when my heart needs it to.
Carmen Rempel
Posted to Facebook, Sunday 29 November, @ 8:39 am

I was tagged in a social media post this weekend, and when I read the post (quoted above), I immediately thought This is why I do what I do: the possibility that mere words can inform lives, or say something that we need to hear in the particular moment we read particular words. I have no idea where or if my words will land, but praise be, they did for this dear one! And they are still speaking! Of course, it isn’t me at all, but the spirit of the words and the spirit of the heart that receives them.

Thanks so much for sharing your experience, Carmen.

Speaking of writing that goes BOOM, check out Carmen’s blog HERE.

Now bravely go and do what only you can do.

Blessings,

Lesley-Anne

Pop-Up for love

“I was answered in spiritual understanding, and it was said: What, do you wish to know your Lord’s meaning in this thing? Know it well, love was his meaning. Who reveals it to you? Love. What did he reveal you? Love. Why does he reveal it to you? For Love…. So I was taught that love is our Lord’s meaning.”

~ St. Julian of Norwich

Sun’s out, bulbs are up, ducks have visited our swamp of a pool and left for someplace more appropriate to raise their family. April has committed herself to us, and with April comes Spring and National Poetry Month.

Poetry, hmmmm… sounds vaguely familiar.

I’ve been giving myself to writing, work days attached to my laptop more than anything else, other than necessary breaks for laundry and sleep. Yes, there was an amazing spiritual retreat over Easter where I broke from work and soaked in mystery. But, except for a brief trip and PUP in San Francisco, my poems haven’t been dusted off or hung up anywhere in months.

It’s time. Today.

So why? For love. For love of writing and sharing poetry. For love of those who may find a helpful word. For love of process. For love of myself. For love of God who has given me this day and this gift and this opportunity. For love.

Today. Kelowna. Downtown. Soon.

May love ambush you in the thick of things.

Love,

Lesley-Anne

p.s. as I prepare to go out, I go in the warmth of knowing a friend is organizing a group of love letter writers to play hide and seek with their words/art a week from today. Kelowna, consider yourself hugged!

Rotary Centre, Kelowna

I left my heart (and poems) in San Francisco…

Just a few early morning poetry pins around the beautiful streets before the ride to the airport and the take off and airborne goodbyes to the skyline and bay and landmarks now trodden by my tired feet: Alcatraz’s unexpected art and music installations, the poet’s chair at City Lights, Aria‘s surprises on upper Grant, Cafe Au Lait at Cafe Greco in North Beach, and climbing Lombardy Street and the 45 degree slopes up to Coit Tower and maybe parrots squawking, and riding the Big Bus tour and the trolleys and the streetcars, and eating in so many great restaurants, and finding poetry painted on hotel walls and stamped in the pavement and attached to the railings and now hanging there, my little Pop-Up-Poems hanging there like flags fluttering in accepting air. YES!

Oh San Francisco, be still my heart. Find the hearts that need you, Pop-Up-Poetry!

Most of all, thank you to the two dear hearts that joined mine on our lovely San Francisco adventure ❤ I love you both so much!

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Leaves and pages

A sunny September weekend and what better activity for a poet left alone to her own devices than to share poetry. So I went over to Mission Sports Fields and clipped some pages to the branches of the amazing collection of trees in the Arboretum. (if you are interested in gardening, this is a wonderful resource of many tree varieties that thrive here in the Okanagan.) And pinned a few more poems to the fence at the soccer pitch.

My heart somewhat light and buoyant, I was heading back to the car when I spied a woman reading my words. So I asked if I might take her photograph and she said,