A Poem for Amory on the occasion of his 36th birthday

My little boy who once
Walked the creek,
With me each day, wobbled
On rocks and piles of twig, stopped
To see and touch
All that caught his eye.
While I, anxious
To get somewhere, stood watch
Tethered for a time.

Now each morning
I look for him, still
Through a small window, framed
Into the ether, open
To find from his hand,
and a charcoal stick, charging
Smoke and fire flowing, wild
Through mountains, rivers, creeks
Drawn in deft detail, daring
Across a wide white panel.
And he in watchful vision,
Balanced artfully, fiercely
On his own.

Solstice

The tip of a turn
and off we go
on a new way
to who knows where.

I stand and look
I feel the ground
I fall again
and turn.

To what has been
searing sadness at the loss
Innocence lost
Again and again.

A shadow cast
My dark form
Turns
And finds a way.

Stumbling, sliding, flowing
To the bright
That tempts me
Over and over.

I cannot stay still
I wish I could
But all is turning
Phase to new phase.

I take my breath
And go.

Now

Cold revisited?
I meet you with a warm breath.

Live Wire

HA!
I'm all about it,
Just everything!
Electric limbs,
Out it all comes,
WATCH OUT!

I've been
Radiated
Infused
ZAP!  POW!
Hair falls,
Toes tingle,
Tissues singe and scar;
Apocalyptic atrophy!
Then spring, sprang, sprung,
RELEASE!

Polka dotted pulsing,
Watch me dance,
HA!  Live Wire!
Flip up,
Fly down,
Watch me steroid wild!
Gonna be that way,
Watch out!
ZOW!

 -Julia Livingston

Understood

I've had an illness
That might come back
But it isn't here now and I am.

My X-illness and I were quite a pair;
Very intense relationship,
Violent in fact.
I could have died.

For I don't know how long
I really did not know
What was going on.
It just seemed normal to me.
When I found out,
In the moment when I understood,
I thought I would die.

Instead I live with a restraining order.
I mean, I eat and sleep with a restraining order.
Always on the look out
For a sign, a creeping up;
And off we'll go again
My Illness and I.

-Julia Livingston

Winter Solstice Wedding Ceremony, 2013 - This is a section of text that I will be reading at my dear niece's Soltice Wedding Ceremony

We gather here on this wondrous dark winter's evening to celebrate this marraige at the time of the winter solstice.  A time that for millennia has been a winter's celebration of nature's cycle of renewal.

A time when our days of lengthening darkness become days of lengthening light.  The winter solstice is not a certain moment in time but an immeasurable shifting and turning.  Even now as we are gathered together in this room in the deepest dark of winter, our earth is tilting just a bit more on it's axis as it orbits the sun.  We are moving through overlapping shadows, light and dark, to a new phase.

We hold steady in the knowing that we rest in an imperceptible vast motion that carries us surely and steadily forward.  We live in the hope that we will be brought safely and surely through the dormancy of winter into the quickening of life in spring.  We celebrate in the hope of the coming of the light.

That love can be a renewing process can at times seem like the greatest mystery of all.  The solstice reveals some aspects of that mystery to us.  Love's process of renewal is not a return of the same or a repetition of the same, but a transformative renewal, a freshening, a rebirth.

We often feel its quickening in the darkest moments. It emerges and comes to light when greeted honestly with serious compassion and care in words and actions, with tenderness in fragile moments.  Renewal of love carries forward at times in joyous ease, and at other times, in painful truths and tears.  We hold it in awe.  We rest in its rhythm. We gain strength as we offer ourselves to its call again and again.  We live in longing for its vibrant illumination

-Julia Livingston, December, 2013

April, 2013

My vigilant eye is on this spring.
Death lights flash through thin green thickets.
Sparrow turns, puff ruffles on a breezy limb.
No plans for sure.