CROSSINGS

The great gray whales are training their young
for the long trek north. I watch their majestic rise,
the plunge, the rise again toward storms
and darkened bays where killer whales wait.

And still they dive and blow, spumes lifting.
This balcony overlooks a rocky shore

where a thousand years of surf have carved
sandstone into a gallery of curves and shapes—

a human family leaning into each other,
a mother without arms, her child submerged.

The sea so wide and my small boat of words.
What are the lines between the lines?

Relinquishment over and over, a loose raft
on which I float. Nothing to hold, not the silver

spilling from the moon, nor these slippery words,
the vowels “oh” and “ah” becoming mist.

BECOMING A WORD

I’m passing through a phase: gradually I’m changing to a word. —Stanley Kunitz

Word, that single, distinct element
of speech, my name already etched

into marble where sun, rain, and a tree
are its only companions, until the tree

falls and is shredded and boiled,
then pressed into paper to be marked

by a hand holding a pen, writing tree.

THE UNFOLDING

In the end let me be found,
not in the frenzy of the hive,
but curled around the stamen
of a full-blown rose.

THE SIMPLE LIFE

I am looking for the first word,
the one which will begin to explain
how simple life once was.
I tried “snow” but it got lost
in the layers as it fell all night.
Then “bread” but I can’t remember
where my father purchased flour
or how you feed seven children
on a country schoolteacher’s pay.
And did we each have a chair
at the table, and who sang which song?

All we needed was some wood
or coal to keep warm. Someone
borrowed an axe, or was lowered
into a mine. All he needed
was a pick and bucket, and a lamp
with oil, which someone cut out
of a whale, which someone
dragged from the sea.

And a wool blanket spun and woven
from a summer of grazing sheep.
The mechanized loom worked
on steam which required another
fire, and children rubbed sleep
from their eyes so their hands
wouldn’t get caught in the gears.
It was as simple as that.

Poems excerpted from Jean Janzen, Crossings: New and Selected Poems (Cascadia/DreamSeeker Books, 2026) and selected as favorites by Crossings editors Jeff Gundy, Julia Spicher Kasdorf, and Hope Nisly

—Jean Janzen, a poet living in Fresno, California, is the author of six previous collections of poetry who has received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and other awards. A graduate of Fresno Pacific University and California State University of Fresno, she has taught at Fresno Pacific and Eastern Mennonite University. Janzen’s most recent book is Crossings: New and Selected Poems (2026). She is also author of What the Body Knows (DreamSeeker Books/Cascadia, 2015). These poems are cross-posted on Substack.