Ottertail
County, Minnesota
On the twenty-second of June, 1919,
a great tornado came through Fergus Falls,
killing forty-eight people and destroying
the Swedish Lutheran Church and the Grand Hotel.
Family lore
has it
that not long before my grandmother Delle’s death in 1935
from breast cancer,
a smaller tornado came through my grandparents’ farm.
There’s a picture of Delle standing dwarfed
among big downed trunks and branches.
Her hair is gray, and she’s wearing
a light apron or frock.
When I enlarge the black-and-white image, I fail
to get a better idea of her face,
but her distant forward-looking eyes zoom
to deep pupil-less black holes.
that not long before my grandmother Delle’s death in 1935
from breast cancer,
a smaller tornado came through my grandparents’ farm.
There’s a picture of Delle standing dwarfed
among big downed trunks and branches.
Her hair is gray, and she’s wearing
a light apron or frock.
When I enlarge the black-and-white image, I fail
to get a better idea of her face,
but her distant forward-looking eyes zoom
to deep pupil-less black holes.
Family lore has
it
that that small tornado blew a flock of blackbirds against the barn wall.
The barn was unharmed,
but more than twenty blackbirds lay strewn around beside it.
Delle ordered the kids to gather up the birds,
and she dressed them, baked them into a pie, and invited
all the relatives over for dinner.
It’s a testament to the force of Delle’s personality
that they all came,
and that they remembered the dinner afterwards,
passing down
a tradition of its memory, even to
that that small tornado blew a flock of blackbirds against the barn wall.
The barn was unharmed,
but more than twenty blackbirds lay strewn around beside it.
Delle ordered the kids to gather up the birds,
and she dressed them, baked them into a pie, and invited
all the relatives over for dinner.
It’s a testament to the force of Delle’s personality
that they all came,
and that they remembered the dinner afterwards,
passing down
a tradition of its memory, even to
