Winter

By Marie Ponsot b. 1921 Marie Ponsot

I don’t know what to say to you, neighbor,

as you shovel snow from your part of our street

neat in your Greek black. I’ve waited for

chance to find words; now, by chance, we meet.

We took our boys to the same kindergarten,

thirteen years ago when our husbands went.

Both boys hated school, dropped out feral, dropped in

to separate troubles. You shift snow fast, back bent,

but your boy killed himself, six days dead.

My boy washed your wall when the police were done.

He says, “We weren’t friends?” and shakes his head,

“I told him it was great he had that gun,”

and shakes. I shake, close to you, close to you.

You have a path to clear, and so you do.

Marie Ponsot, “Winter” from The Bird Catcher. Copyright © 1998 by Marie Ponsot. Reprinted with the permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

Source: The Bird Catcher (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998)

Biography

Born in New York, poet and translator Marie Ponsot is the daughter of a teacher and a wine importer and was raised Catholic, a faith she still observes. She earned a BA at St. Joseph’s College for Women in Brooklyn, New York, and an MA in 17th-century literature at Columbia University. On a ship to Paris after World War II, she met poet and publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who later published Ponsot’s debut collection through . . .

Continue reading this biography