Leroy Leonard | To Create...

It is with great joy and gratitude that I announce the publication of my first book of poetry at Amazon. com.

I discovered my love of writing in 2009 at the Colorado Writing Project. For two weeks teachers of elementary school students gathered to expand our skills in the teaching of writing. What we didn’t know was that we were going to be asked to become writers ourselves. The mornings were filled with research and lesson plans and the sharing of ideas. In the afternoons, we wrote. There I discovered I am a writer.

Fast forward a few years and another milestone in my life came as I stepped away from the Roman Catholic Church and found Fr. Scott Jenkins at A Church of the Holy Family. It is a Catholic, but not Roman, church of the Ecumenical Catholic Communion. The ECC truly welcomes all.

Here I found a love for the arts – poetry, theatre, music, visual. I also found a place that creates space for Passage Meditation and numerous ways to pray and learn to live a Christ-centered life through a Celtic lens.

Soon I was writing and acting in plays, designing liturgy and liturgical space, composing prayers, and most important to my journey, writing lots of poetry. Filters is an encapsulated account of my faith journey.

During this time my monologues were published in two editions of Audition Monologues for Young Women compiled by Gerald Lee Ratliff. My poetry is included in How To Write A Poem by Tania Runyan, published by T.S. Poetry Press. Two of my poems will be seen in Casual next April 2016 in Tweetspeak Poetry‘s e-book for National Poetry Month.

Finally, my Advent devotional commissioned by A Church of the Holy Family will be available on Amazon.com this coming Advent season.

I thank all of my family at Holy Family, as well as my husband, Leroy Leonard, Fr. Scott Jenkins, and Kathleen Gorman for their unwavering faith me. They gave me the encouragement, the hard-ass-stick-to-it-lady-you-can-d0-its, and led me to discover in myself where the Divine resides. I now realize that I actually do have a ministry – sharing the Word though poetry and theatre.

I am deeply grateful for the harvest of this season.

We used to collect bells. Do you
remember? You made a folding
structure, wood with brass hooks,
on which to hang them. Little ones
mostly, not grandiose like Liberty
or Notre Dame.

Then we collected odd labels from
cheap wine, not yet having developed
a palate. Soaked and scraped, then
laid to rest in photo albums, the kind
with sticky pages and acetate covers.

You always collected watches, pocket,
wrist, forgotten family treasures. Never
expensive, just ones with a story, or
just to keep time.

I always collected rocks, especially
the sparkly ones. Rose quartz, purple
amethyst. As a child I didn’t know
they had meanings. I now understand
stones tell stories, like books.

Can we count books, too? Many
collections have come and gone.
Some come again in realization
that one should never get rid of books.

Art became a passion. Still would be,
if wall space and bank notes agreed.
But dime store prints display as
much joy when the eye is well pleased.

As time moved with suns rising
and moons falling, telescopes, six
of them, most hand made, took up
residence under our roof beneath
city skies with too much light and
eyes no longer keen.

Oh, there were caps and hats like
your father used to wear. Pens to
write with, flowers to bloom, recorders
and flutes to serenade. Maybe,
someday, ukuleles, too.

But the sweetest collection we
ever gathered took hardly no
time at all. It was simple and
easy, my heart collected next
to yours. Happy birthday.