I am slowly being changed
from the inside out by the giantess
who lives in my tree—we
have become an Oregon oak
struggling to connect
the sky to the pure agates
hidden in our roots.

I vote for acorns;
she votes for falling leaves,
for shrugging off all color.
She wants to brood,
wrapped in her thick wood
until not even the sharpest stars
can pierce her dream.

I grub for the lost agates with both hands.
Stuffing them into my apron
pockets, I climb up her
chest limbs to Raven’s
unruly nest. I can place
the round stones there where the moon
can imbue them
with milky light.

Still held tight
by her dry, mossy hands,
I can turn the cheek
she can’t see to a salt breeze
coming from a sea
not far from here—
over the hill by the river’s mouth
where my jade horse still stands,
bridled
and ready to run.

–Sandy Jensen

Heartsong Snowstorm
(after a form by Lex Runciman)

March snow storm—fast, fat,
furry flakes from the Coast Range
all the way across the Valley
floor to the Cascade
rim of our white ceramic
Willamette bowl.
Windshield wipers
parse glimpses of newborn lambs
suckling first milk:
white on white on white,
snowy air of my heart.

Skies of my heart cover
the woven basket of wetland
reeds, alkali flats,
sagebrush steppes: myths and rivers
of my childhood. Passive blue eye,
you who have seen my father’s curiosity,
followed his red socks into the desert,
trained his eyes to see
your Great Web, you will not blink
when my river, too,
has dried to a sand arroyo under your
pitiless sun,
burnt landscape of my heart.

And I have been followed by people
I do not know
into streets I have had to name myself.
At dawn, when mist rises
from the river and the fishermen
drink coffee, string line under the pilings
of the creosote docks,
the lovers find each other by the jade elephants
in Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe and children
tag their way to school through the back
alleys and dusty lots
of the lost city of my heart.

Be adventurous and kind,
tragic people of my heart,
I am inventing you
while my lungs still breathe
and the snow still falls
cold and white:
air of my heart.

–Sandy Jensen
March 12, 2009