Tater Tot Casserole

Twenty years ago, at the very hour I post this (noon), two kids were married.  The bride was 19, the groom 22, and they had a combined monthly income of $450, $220 of which went to rent their weird little apartment carved out of the second floor of an old house in Moscow, Idaho.  They were starry-eyed students who, as the bride’s father put it, thought they could “live on love.”  They had no honeymoon, except for a night at the Best Western that their friends pitched in for, and went right back to work the day after they wed.

We’ve come a long way, baby.  Happy Anniversary!

For my sister, Kris

Shade

Under arching branches

Of a row of Russian Olives, you and I

Built a cottage.  We lived a new life

In rooms created by boundaries

Only we could discern.  I held

My place as eldest, overseer

Of our motherless cloister, as we

Busied ourselves with tasks—

Gathering, sorting, naming.

Long after the branches were cut

And their limbs no longer brushed

The grass, I searched for the confines

Of our refuge, seeing only in vision

The piles of slender leaves and sagey berries

We supped and savored as we lifted

Twigs to our lips.  

Our house no longer needs an overseer,

But we dwell in the safe coolness of

Embracing limbs, preparing to break

Through the branches, blinking in sunshine.