These Days

These days I buy 
bigger jeans— I’m tired 
of squeezing hope 
into a size too small.
These days I try on 
desire in different colors 
without the itch 
of an apology tagged on.

I notice these days when
words sharpen for cutting
off or cutting into. They 
stick like knives into rising
bread and won’t come back 
clean these days because
I am not done.

These days I remember
how I am used to blood
and that the tides and 
the moon are my sisters.
These days I know 
my neighbors’ names—

nuthatch, house finch,
chickadee and crow, 
the one with the same 
feather missing on each 
of her wings. I wonder 
these days if symmetry 

makes suffering
more bearable, the way
women mirror each other
over a glass of wine,
reflecting back what is
missing in their lives.

These days we have to
do whatever it takes
to keep on flying.




Shoveling

My husband received
upsetting news this morning
and has gone out 
to shovel snow again,
cracking through 
the porcelain driveway
after a blizzard
that ended in freezing rain

He cuts line after line
in the neat way
that he shaves his face,
pausing at the end 
of each row to fling snow,
just as he might fling
lather into the sink

He’ll come in soon
and the hours will drag by
like a dull blade
on this day that can’t
be smoothed. He looks up
and instead of his reflection 
sees my face 
at the window





Reading Mrs. Dalloway

I open the book
as if opening a door.
Instead of Clarissa 
Dalloway it is Nana
who greets me,
her name appearing 
in blue script
on the inside cover.

It has been almost
thirty years since she died,
yet here she is
with her wide smile
and blue cardigan
standing in the door frame,
the same blue, it seems,
as the hydrangeas
that grew outside
her island home.

And so as Clarissa
goes out into the streets
of London to buy
the flowers herself, 
Nana walks out
into her garden
with scissors and a vase—
filled with “awe” 
was the way 
she said it—

and it appears Nana
might also be hosting
this evening, for soon after
Clarissa leans over 
the bannisters and shouts:
Remember our party tonight!
here is Nana again,
coming back through
the door, setting down

a brown bag and
removing her hat—
sour dough rolls,
heavy cream, cider
she has written
on an orange post-it
marking the page
with a shopping list. 
But as Clarissa Dalloway’s
stream of consciousness
continues to spill

over the pages,
I am carried along
with it, leaving Nana
at the sink, her back turned,
the only sound 
in the kitchen
the faucet’s 
steady babble.





A Bird in the New Year

A little bird—a junco, I think—
searches under the bush
in his gray overcoat:

an old man who has dropped
something small like a coin
from his pocket.

But no, he’s too quick
in the way he jumps 
through the snow,

as light on his feet
as my children playing
hopscotch in the summer,

skittering across squares 
of chalk, all thin legs 
and scuffed shoes,

those little numbered boxes
lined up like days
on a calendar that stretch

down the driveway
and out into the future.
Days we try to contain,

squaring up the edges,
squeezing them into rows,
but time, that feathered thing, 

is here, then gone,
the cages we drew
rinsed away in a warm rain.

But I’ve been looking back again—
the junco’s long gone.
Rising from my chair

by the window, I join
the world as it jumps forward,
its people forever chasing

a pebble thrown just ahead


About the Author:

Claire Robarts lives in Brunswick, Maine with her husband and three young boys. She works as a therapist with low-income children who have experienced trauma. She has been writing poetry for many years.

*Feature image by Martin Martz on Unsplash