Introduction by Ted Kooser: Marge Saiser, who lives in Nebraska, is a fine and a very lucky poet. With the passing of each year her poems have gotten stronger and deeper. That's an enviable direction for a writer. This poem was published in The Briar Cliff Review and it looks back wisely and wistfully over a rich life. Saiser's most recent book is The Woman in the Moon from the Backwaters Press.

Weren’t We Beautiful

growing into ourselves

earnest and funny we were

angels of some kind, smiling visitors

the light we lived in was gorgeous

we looked up and into the camera

the ordinary things we did with our hands

or how we turned and walked

or looked back we lifted the child

spooned food into his mouth

the camera held it, stayed it

there we are in our lives as if

we had all time

as if we would stand in that room

and wear that shirt those glasses

as if that light

without end

would shine on us

and from us.

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 ©2018 by Marjorie Saiser, "Weren't We Beautiful," from The Briar Cliff Review, (Vol. 30, 2018). Poem reprinted by permission of Marjorie Saiser and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2019 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

Introduction by Ted Kooser: Marge Saiser is a Nebraska poet about whose work I have said that no contemporary poet is better at writing about love. Here's a love poem from her new book, I Have Nothing to Say about Fire, from Backwaters Press.

You and I on the boat notice

the print the whales leave,

the huge ring their diving draws

for a time on the surface.

Is it like that when we

lose one another? Don't

know, can't. But

I want to believe

when we can no longer

walk across a room

for a hug, can no longer

step into the arms of the other,

there will be this:

some trace that stays

while the great body

remains below out of sight,

dark mammoth shadow

flick of flipper

body of delight

diving deep.

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 ©2016 by Marjorie Saiser, “The Print the Whales Make,” from I Have Nothing to Say about Fire, (Backwaters Press, 2016). Poem reprinted by permission of Marjorie Saiser and the publisher. Introduction copyright ©2017 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004- 2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.