Beautiful Poetry from Leela

From Leela:
Hi Dom, Janie, Don, Amy--

I thought of you all today when my friend Charlene reminded me, "God's invincible power sweeps everything before it and I ride the wave to my perfect reality." She says that every time she uses this phrase she sees the sea sweeping the sand free of debris leaving it pristine. I like that. Here is another poem from Rilke:

I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.

Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that's wide and timeless.

So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:

a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

to Bring:
Infinite Spirit opens the way
for great abundance, aliveness,
and joy for Dom Ambriz.
He is an irresistible magnet
for all that belongs
to him by divine right.

Thinking of you - Leela

A Table in the Wilderness
by Li-Young Lee

I draw a window
and a man sitting inside it.

I draw a bird in flight above the lintel.

That's my picture of thinking.

If I put a woman there instead
of the man, it's a picture of speaking.

If I draw a second bird
in the woman's lap, it’s ministering.

A third flying below her feet.
Now it's singing.

Or erase the birds
make ivy branching
around the woman's ankles, clinging
to her knees, and it becomes remembering.

You'll have to find your own
pictures, whoever you are,
whatever your need.

As for me, many small hands
issuing from a waterfall
means silence
mothered me.

The hours hung like fruit in night's tree
means when I close my eyes
and look inside me,

a thousand open eyes
span the moment of my waking.

Meanwhile, the clock
adding a grain to a grain
and not getting bigger,

subtracting a day from a day
and never having less, means the honey

lies awake all night
inside the honeycomb
wondering who its parents are.

And even my death isn't my death
unless it's the unfathomed brow
of a nameless face.

Even my name isn't my name
except the bees assemble

a table to grant a stranger
light and moment in a wilderness
of Who? Where?


From Book of My Nights (BOA, 2001) by Li-Young Lee. Copyright © 2001.