I Ask My Students to Remember and I Am Still Writing Long After They Have Left the Room

I remember being surprised when the saw
came up to meet my face,
by the log truck in my lane,
by the sound of a storm cloud cracking open,
how the rain stripped the roses from the vine.

I remember screaming when I saw my own blood,
when the truck wouldn’t swerve from my lane,
when I realized part of me was dead
and part of me alive, when I was overwhelmed
I screamed, and I screamed when I panicked,
and once I screamed for joy.

I remember the smell of ozone after the lightning strike,
the faint whiff of skunk on the wind,
the landfill in the distance. Then the smell
of orange blossoms filled up the valley. When
I came in from the snow, the smell of
peach pies on the stove.

I remember the first time after that time
I was afraid of the dark
and it occurred to me
there might not be a God,
that the soul and the breath and the moment
might be all I got this first time,
this only time.

I remember dreaming my father was alive,
that I could fly, that I still
lived in the big house on the hill.
I dreamed the silver fox, the golden dog,
and I dreamed the yellow spider on my sleeve.


–Sandy Jensen

“Write a Map of Your Spiritual Journey”

But childhood was not a plateau,
birth was not a low point
from which all other points
arose; childhood is not a bar graph
or a Gantt chart,
nor is it a star chart
of comparative brightness:
it is the soul’s bright geography,
the dark woodlot where my sister terrified
me with a headless snake
still writhing toward me
fifty years later.

Do you remember the place on the hill
toward which all people
streamed for twenty years
that flashed green and bright
as the Emerald City
then snuffed out
as if it had never been?

The soul’s journey has
her animal companions,
the repetitive landscape
of nightmare and dream,
murky with memory.
This journey needs a map
with rivers that run underground,
that run backward through time,
that loop through
reconsiderations,
love affairs that blossomed and fell from the tree,
evenings that dazzled,
trees that burst into flame still standing as
landmarks in a burning swamp
where St. Elmo’s blue breath
throws the antique shadows of ibis
into time’s rippling stream.

If we speak of maps dangerous
as these, you must know there is a man
holding three fingers in warning;
there is a crossroad almost unseen
out of the corner of your eye.
This is populated wilderness—
even the desert has its signs of banded gold,
as sand shifts down into the dune
of geologic time.

My hair has stood on end
in an electric wind.
The sealstone on my wrist tells a story.
Helen, the world’s treasure,
has spoken personally to me, and I
have tried to turn her away.
I follow my own dreams—
a silver fox, a golden dog,
a woman named Nightwinds,
and a soul boat on the River of Stars.
I have been stopped by barriers of height and stone,
by fire and snake.

I have been known to turn
reasonably away, and thus
a map is shaped, some neat
and faded label re-inked,
strengthened on the page:
“Here lies true north,”
and south–I’ve been there,
to the east, memory,
to the west, terra incognita,
the calling land
and the road ahead.

–Sandy Jensen

Ruby Heart

If she were a mountain,
she’d be Diamond Peak,
sharp-edged and cold,
sea to her west,
continent to her east,
face to the northern wind,
California has her back.
If she were a song—
play her name on an Indian flute,
fiddle her home to grandma,
fill her up with lilt and longing,
call her “Song for a Daughter.”
If she were a time of day,
sunset would dry her tears
and paint her arms
with the spindrift tattoos
of the scarlet surf.
If she were a river,
she’d flow green and slow
as the Siuslaw,
shadowed by cedar,
dreaming of spring Chinook,
flickering trout
where her hair waterfalls down.
If she were the heroine of a film,
she would ride a camel
around the world, find
the ruby heart of the world
and bring it home to you.

–Sandy Jensen

Art

Where does art come from?
Who has the ideas –
whose hand moves the vermillion brush
running into green-gold skies?

Who is it that loves water
and a glaze so sheer it
shimmers with melting light?

Who is in love with the tender line,
the blackest storm and the crack of light?
It is me and more than me-
the hand of God loves art.

I bow my head,
stand slightly aside –
hands, brush, heart.
we wait.

Cheryl R. Long
Solstice December 21, 2008

College Girl Mermaid in her Christmas Sweater
December 23, 2008

These past couple of weeks, my mind has been a blank, a reflective surface bouncing light off winter snow. I awoke at 4:00 am thinking I should start drawing again to wake my Muse. As I drew, I understood that mind is in the head with glasses and soul is in the body, which swims in the sea of unconscious memories, dreams, desires.