American Life in Poetry

Marge Saiser is a Nebraskan who has written a number of deeply moving poems about love. Here’s one for our holiday season:

Thanksgiving for Two

The adults we call our children will not be arriving

with their children in tow for Thanksgiving.

We must make our feast ourselves,

slice our half-ham, indulge, fill our plates,

potatoes and green beans

carried to our table near the window.

We are the feast, plenty of years,

arguments. I’m thinking the whole bundle of it

rolls out like a white tablecloth. We wanted

to be good company for one another.

Little did we know that first picnic

how this would go. Your hair was thick,

mine long and easy; we climbed a bluff

to look over a storybook plain. We chose

our spot as high as we could, to see

the river and the checkerboard fields.

What we didn’t see was this day, in

our pajamas if we want to,

wrinkled hands strong, wine

in juice glasses, toasting

whatever’s next,

the decades of side-by-side,

our great good luck.

Poem copyright 2014 by Marjorie Saiser and reprinted by permission of the author. American Life in Poetry is supported by the Poetry Foundation and the English department at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. We do not accept unsolicited submissions.