The Weight of Newness
for my son
Your slightest cry ripples through me.
Rising from the light sleep of motherhood,
I find you tucked in flannelled shadows,
gather you and feel the weight of newness.
Blanketing you with my robed body, I pad
into the room at the top of the stairs.
Night after night, from late winter
through spring, we sit cocooned
on the brown tweed couch, fighting sleep,
watching our reflections in the sliding glass door.
We breathe in the brine and salt of the Pacific.
Distant misty foghorns and shushing waves soothe us.
I wrap you in another blanket and another,
and we step out into the cool California night.
The stars flicker through swaying eucalyptus,
so close I can touch them.
I gather them for your safekeeping.
״A personal history that weaves deftly across time, place, and generations.״
The reader experiences a deep sense of empathy for suffering and an equal ability to celebrate success.
"How finely wrought and realized these poems are.
Ms. Weiner proffers a sampler only, but a sumptuous one, a harbinger of the feast forthcoming."
Thomas Lynch, author of
Bone Rosary–
New & Selected Poems (Godine, 2021)
"These are moving stories about the arrival of her ancestors from Russia. In this evocative collection, Weiner weaves an intricate tapestry of scenes from her life, her culture, her parents and grandparents, and her detailed, deftly told tales cast a spell on us, and we are willingly wrapped/trapped in its threads."
Joseph Zilka, author of
In Our Beautiful Bones, Sparrows and Dust
"Claire Weiner’s new collection, “For a Chance to Walk on Streets of Gold,” is an evocative compendium of poems about her childhood, family relationships, the generational effects of war, and falling in love. In just a few poems, an entire universe is deftly drawn, clearly, honestly, and compassionately. What a delight to read."
Pia Borsheim, Ph.D. author of
Above the Birch Line
and Love Poems
Read Her Book
For a Chance to Walk on Streets of Gold
by Claire Weiner
Recently Published Poems
My boyfriend and I drive from Bloomington to Champaign, 1970
Insects glut our windshield like Saturday confessions
at Our Lady of the Prairie on a day
so sapped by humidity our car
seems to lose speed. Radio stations sputter,
the backs of our thighs slowly melt into cracked
vinyl seats, as searing air blasts
through open windows of our ’59 Chevy.
Desiccated cornfields line the road. It’s a helluva
drive after a wrecked weekend with friends
who never missed a chance to swipe or gripe
at each other about God-knows. We skipped out
before the kill, before the weekend devolved
into something like The Ride of the Valkyries.
Now, we’re pushing the pedal to make it home
before nightfall, when a station, maybe in Terre Haute,
decides to cue Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major.
The violins and cello settle over us
and we pull to the side of the rode to listen,
corn stalks rustling.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
For a chance to walk
on streets
paved with gold
refugees ride waves
of half empty
promises
sleep in dust
that belongs
to no country
guards on horseback
corral them
like cattle
in ankle deep water
under a bridge
at the Rio Grande.
In Poland and Russia
land was traded
like marbles
and the tzar’s soldiers
galloped through shtetls
snatching Jews with delight.
My grandfathers sailed
to a new world with, I’m told,
“Nothing but clothes on their backs.”
One a tailor, one a blacksmith
found the way to Chicago, shed
names as they went—
boarding ships as Nuchem
and Hershel, disembarking
as Nathan and Harry,
Peninsula Poets, 2022
More Published Works
Claire Weiner lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with her husband Kirk, where they raised their son and daughter. She worked as a clinical social worker in academic settings for over thirty years, mentoring and supervising students, and retired after more than a decade in a private psychotherapy practice. Claire is long-time meditator, and in the last half of her career applied the principles of mindfulness to her work with patients and couples. While retired from providing psychotherapy, she continues to teach meditation in the community and is a founding and current board member of Ann Arbor Center for Mindfulness. In her social work career and her mindfulness practice she honed the essential skills of paying close attention and deep listening. These skills are also fundamental to the writing of poetry which begs for close observation of the outer world, one’s inner landscape and the interplay between the two.
"Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.” Robert Frost
Bear River Review, 2015, “In my Alley”
Versewrights, 2017, “The Sun is on Hiatus”
https://www.versewrights.com/weiner-claire.html
Bear River Review, 2017, “Ode to Winter”
But Does It Rhyme, 2018, “A Cold Tuesday in March”
http://www.butdoesitrhyme.com/Archives/October_2018.htm
Muddy River Poetry Review, 2018, “August River”
after hourspress: a journal of Chicago writing and art, 2018, “Changing my Mind about Beets”
Tuck Magazine, 2018, “Dust”
https://tuckmagazine.com/2018/06/07/poetry-1529/
Versewrights, 2019, “Summer Haiku”, “Waiting Room”, “The Moon Smiles”, “Smokers on my Way to Work”
https://www.versewrights.com/weiner-claire.html
Uppagus, 2019, “Email from Berlin”
https://uppagus.com/flash-fiction/weiner-berlin/
Peninsula Poets, 2022, “The more things change, the more they stay the same”
Hoffman Center for the Arts, 2023, “Finally Spring”
Voices of Lincoln Chapbook, 2022, “While my Mother Sits Sewing”
Making Waves: A West Michigan Review, 2023, “The New Sign”
https://www.ludingtonwriters.org/mwwm/making-waves-2023
Peninsula Poets, 2023, “Cycling in Holland” 3rd pl. winner Nature
Michigan Jewish History Journal, 2023, “Aubade at Masada”
Poet Tree Town, April 2023 National Poetry month celebration, Ann Arbor, Michigan
“Amber Beads”
Ann Arbor Observer, Poet Tree Town 2023, “And of my Tender-hearted Son”
https://annarborobserver.com/blog/and-of-my-tender-hearted-son/
Finishing Line Press, 2024, For a Chance to Walk on Streets of Gold ( chapbook)
Hoffman Center for the Arts, 2022, “Blue Haikus”
https://hoffmanarts.org/blue-haikus-claire-weiner/
Peninsula Poets, 2024, “My Mother made Pickles”
Macqueens Quinterly, “The Morning my Mother Died”
http://www.macqueensquinterly.com/MacQ23/Weiner-The-Morning.aspx
Macqueens Quinterly, 2024, “The Weight of Newness”
http://www.macqueensquinterly.com/MacQ23/Weiner-Newness.aspx
Macqueens Quinterly , 2024, “Chicken and Eggs”
http://www.macqueensquinterly.com/MacQ23/Weiner-Chickens.aspx
Lamar University, Senior Class Anthology: 100 Poems on Aging, 2024 “Penultimate Hospital Visit”
https://www.lamar.edu/literary-press/genre/poetry/the-senior-class-100-poets-on-aging.html
Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, 2024, “What Adults Say and Do when your Child has Cancer”
https://www.theintima.org/poetry-ml
Aorta Literary Magazine,( forthcoming 2026), Sometimes it felt like my father was held together by scars
Washtenaw Jewish News, 2025, “Between Stimulus and Response”
https://washtenawjewishnews.org/news/ ( Sept 2025)
Judith Magazine, 2025, “A Million Hands”
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/Judith+Magazine/FMfcgzQcqbZJlNVpJJTCpjXJVpmphSGW
The Write Launch, 2025, “my first time”, “The Sun Finds Us”, “My Boyfriend and I Drive from Bloomington to Champaign, 1978”https://thewritelaunch.com/2025/11/my-first-time-1968-my-boyfriend-and-i-drive-from-blomington-to-champaingne-1970-and-the-sun-finds-us/
Qua Literary Journal, 2025, “A Call”, “Late May”, “Sunflowers on a Fall Day”
Skipjack Journal (forthcoming 2026), “We Spoke of Marriage”