Next >> Irene Livingston Irene Livingston has been published in Canada, U.S. England, Australia and NZ., won the Leacock Award for Poetry. She has written a novel "Naked in a Glass-Blue Lake", a short story series and poetry collection. Her picture book, Finklehopper Frog was published April/03 by Tricycle Press, Berkeley CA. Irene also designs, writes and hand paints humorous greeting cards. Buy them at Presents of Mind on Granville and 15th, Vancouver, BC, or email her for info. Contact: irenelivs@shaw.ca www.geocities.com/eereeka/Irene.html Selected Poem: Naked in a Glass-Blue Lake Sun turned bronze-emerald, glints off faces of August leaves, the year and I each approaching our Septembers. I bike-fly down the hill of this sensuous, tree-blessed street, this street that zips open my eyes and kisses all the hungry places under my skin. Gliding beneath canopies of birches, my thoughts go tumbling backward like the scurrying leaves that breeze up behind my wheels. For too long my edges were flattened, corners sanded down by buzzing false joy of wine, the satin steel-wooliness of opiate, each promising nirvana, only to chew ragged holes in my life through which hours, days, years leaked out, a trail of detritus strewn in my wake. Now I strive to seal the holes. No more precious time must drip away, unused, squandered, gone. Now it all roils around me: times of laughter and anger, of sweet love and massive hurt, of generous thoughts and bitter musings. Life rubs against my corners, edges, bumps, spikes. Life goes in and out through my porous skin. I feel what is here to feel, sour pain and delicious pleasure. But sometimes, in the long-cloaked night, a voice steps from black cotton shadows, lips quietly into my ear: You are old. There is not much time. No! No! my heart keens. No! How can I be old? How did I get old? My soul is young still! I need more time; more time to learn life. To read more books, to groan once more under the hands, mouth, rough-gentle body of a lover. I need a million more springs, to touch with my eyes, tender young leaf buds, to be a voyeur at spring’s seduction-into-being of wine-red tulips, morning-yellow daffodils. Eternities more twilights to gasp at long, slanting streaks of coral sunset, washed down with rivers of sapphire cloud. I need time to swim naked in a glass-blue lake, to plunge parachuted from the sky, become insanely rich, play a guitar, plaintively and movingly, to speak fluently in French or Zulu, learn the names of all the vari-colored trees in the world, to bike-climb more hills and hurtle down others, the wind roaring in my ears and manhandling my skin, my teeth howling with rapture. Naked in a Glass-Blue Lake won the Leacock Award for Poetry - $5000 prize - congrats Irene! Back to the Poets Directory Home