Love Story Series

 Sharon Waller and Al Knutson

 

 

The Book Worm Meets the Book Lady

 

By Sharon Waller Knutson

Ater my divorce in my thirties, I was content to be a single career woman for the rest of my life until Al Knutson who read a book a day strolled into my bookstore in August 1995 and that’s all she wrote.  We’ve been together ever since. We were married in a hot air balloon over Reno on Sept. 7, 1996 and we have lived in a wildlife habitat in  the Arizona desert ever since, These poems tell our love story.
 

 

 

Idaho Falls Idaho – 1995

The ink barely dry on his divorce papers,
the farmer turned real estate broker
walks in the bookstore and tells me
he reads a book a day and wants to swap.
Then asks me for supper at a small café
across the river where we enjoy lobster
and baked potatoes and conversation
as smooth as the caffeine we sip until
we see the closed sign in the window
and the waitresses napping in their chairs.
Silver anniversary? the waitress asks
as he pays the check. First date, he says.
I nod and she laughs. Such jokers.
 
Like teenagers, we are eating corn
on the cob and shish kabob
in the bleachers at the Blackfoot Fair
as Tim McGraw sings, I like it, I love it
I want some more of it and we drive
in his white Buick to the top of the hill
above the tiny toy city on the tracks.
You kids go home to your folks, says
the policeman with the shiny flashlight.
I go home to my mother with melanoma
and he to his seventeen-year-old son.
 
Twenty-seven years later, mother long
gone, son with kids and wife of his own,
we eat grilled chicken and green beans
in Applebee’s sitting smack dab in the spot
where the comfortable café once cuddled
the riverbank, but we skip the freeway
ride to the fair and pick up a DVD
by Sheryl Crow and relax in the recliner
in front of the DVD player and listen
to her sing, Every Day is a Winding Road
and pretend we are seeing her in person
as we revel in the landmarks of our life.

 

 

Even If

The Panthers beat the Bulldogs
thanks to your ability to steal
a football and run like lightening,
I wouldn’t have been there
to watch because I was home
writing my advice column
for the high school newspaper
or babysitting for college money.

Even if we had sat side by side
at the Country Bear Jamboree
at Disneyland or stood in the same
line for the Calico Log Ride
at Knott’s Berry Farm
you were focused\on your family
and I was busy taking notes
for my newspaper story.

Even if while on vacation
visiting a college roommate
in Idaho I had seen
you at the barn saddling
a horse with your wife
I wouldn’t have noticed
because I was married
to the newspaper business
and eager to get back
to California.

It was only when I left
my life in California
and you lost your wife
and walked into my store
looking for a book to read
and a dinner companion
that we saw each other
for the first time
and were ready for romance.

 

 

 

 

The Color, Cut and Curl

You should get a beauty
license, my cousin laughs
as she thumbs through
my husband’s licenses
to sell insurance, real
estate, recreational
vehicles and mobile homes.

Don’t need one, he says.
I have a license to use
chemicals, as he mixes
the solutions in Revlon
Colorsilk, shakes them
and squirts the goop
on my roots and rows
he’s raked like the grain
he treated on the farm
in the seventies.

Strands gleam gold
instead of silver
after he snips the split ends
blow dries and curls,
and we drive to Daisy’s Diner
where the white-haired waitress
asks the name of my hair stylist
as she serves us chicken pot pie,
chocolate pudding and Coca Cola.

I say, Al at the Color, Cut and Curl.
 

If Hemingway Wrote our Love Story

The sun would also rise
over the Superstitions
and the bulls would run
across the Arizona desert,
not Pamplona, Spain,

and you would be healthy
as your horses and I would
have flings with cowboys
long before we meet
under a full moon.

Sipping Folgers,
instead of Pernod,
we would stand,
watching through
the kitchen window

as two bulls charge
each other and lock
horns and push each
other around
in a cloud of dust

until they limp off
down the road
and we go back
to our business
of living and loving.

 

 

 

In Our Senior Years

You steady me
when I shake,
catch me
when I stumble,
stand outside
the shower,
handing me
soap and shampoo,
serve me smoothies,
soup, salad and sundaes.

I act as your ears
and eyes
when you remove
your hearing aides
and glasses
and go deaf
and blind
and sleep
through the screeching
smoke alarm
and chorusing coyotes.

When you sit up
saying, Didn’t you scream
my name? I soothe you.
It’s just a nightmare,
as your mother did
and you smile
and fall back to sleep
like when you were
a child more than seven
decades ago.

 

 

On Netflix, We Watch Walt, the Wyoming Sheriff

and his sidekick Standing Bear
chasing outlaws on horseback
across the Indian Reservation.

I remember living on the Ft. Peck
Indian Reservation in the fifties
when the Big Horn boys won
the Montana state basketball trophy.

As Walt crosses state lines,
and arrests a cowboy in Billings,
I remember writing news stories
in the sixties for the Gazette.

When he questions a suspect
on Idaho Falls, I recall running
Gem Book Exchange on Maple
Street in the eighties and nineties.

On Hulu, we watch a game
show contestant singing along
to Tim McGraw’s song I Like it
I Love it, our song in the nineties.

My eyes closed, I sway as I sing:
I want some more of it. Long
after the contestant has bowed out
and the screen gone dark,

we still sing, sway and swing
like we did three decades ago
even though our joints creak
and our voices crack.

“Idaho Falls, Idaho 1995” and “The Color, Cut and Curl’ are from Survivors, Saints and Sinners, “If Hemmingway Wrote Our love Story,” “Even If,’’ ‘In Our Senior Years” and “On Netflix, We Watch Walt,” the Wyoming Sheriff are from He Puts on His Poker Face.

Poem about our hot air balloon wedding

 

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