Claire Weiner Poet

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.

See it Here

Claire Weiner has packed an abundance of life into The Sun Finds Us: childhood memories, adolescent angst, the adult dramas of romance and marriage, as well as several very moving elegies. Above all else, these poems speak to us from the heart.

Richard Tillinghast,

author of

Night Train to Memphis

A profound undercurrent of loss runs through Claire Weiner’s new poetry collection, The Sun Finds Us, but Weiner transmutes that loss into hope by insisting on the redemptive powers of love and human connection. It’s rare to find a poetic voice this authentic.

Cal Freeman,

author of

The Weather of

Our Names

Claire Weiner, in her collection, The Sun Finds Us, writes of love and loss, the value of life, of history and its remaining impacts on familial stories, with a tenderness and generosity of heart. In doing so, she brings us to epiphanies of understanding, empathy and

appreciation for the

writer's skill.

Pia Borsheim, Ph.D.

author of

Above the Birch Line

״Each page comes alive with vivid images and turns, as the poems embrace pivotal moments in love.״

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Latest Book:

The Sun Finds Us

Recently Published

'My Story'
by Claire Weiner

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.

See it Here

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”