Newsletter sign up

Be the first to know when new American Life in Poetry columns are live.

Column 556

Thanksgiving for Two

Intro by Ted Kooser
11.15.2015

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.

Share this column

Disclaimer

We do not accept unsolicited submissions

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2014 by Marjorie Saiser, “Thanksgiving for Two,” (2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Marjorie Saiser. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.