Poem of the Week | January 26, 2026

Clare Rossini has published three books—her first won the Akron Poetry Prize—and coedited an anthology titled The Poetry of Capital (University of Wisconsin, 2020). Rossini’s teaching career includes appointments at Carleton College, Trinity College, and the low-residency MFA program at Vermont College. In 2025, Rossini was appointed poet laureate of West Hartford, Connecticut. She plans to use her position to create events that bring together poetry and birds. Rossini notes, “Birds and poets have long been connected in our cultural tradition, but my motive is more urgent: due to climate change, bird populations in the Northeast have dropped by 40 percent. Time for us to step up for our winged friends.”  

“At Dawn” by Clare Rossini is our Poem of the Week.

At Dawn

She wrenches open the blinds     

then falls back      to the feral warmth of the sheets  

What if she simply   lay here 

allowing the dawn light streaming in    to burnish her 

as it does those clouds      in the east? 

—Not to putz     while the coffee brews, thinking  

Bran flakes? Toast?   Not, minutes later 

to amble down the hall, to Number 403    and stand  

outside the door, hollering  

Alice!  Coffee’s on!   

And then to remember      her dear old friend is gone 

done in   by the damned virus 

Just one morning, not to touch 

that photo of Frank         his eyes lit, dimples showing    

instead, to turn the photo    to the wall 

suddenly done with it all—    the coffee and toast 

the damp spot    between her breasts 

knees grinding in their sockets      

her brows and hair      turning the color of lightning 

Maybe it’s time      to simply lie here 

looking out the window   to the east, where one cloud      

floats away from its fellows     

driven by an invisible wind      

—To imagine drifting like that    but not of her own power 

No     being moved 

Author’s Note

“At Dawn” is from “Maxine’s Hours,” a series of poems exploring the life of a Midwestern woman in her eighties who lives in a senior apartment building. Maxine resembles my late mother-in-law, but she’s gone her own way: spunky, stylish, irreverent; she is also heartbreakingly lonely. Lately, in the middle of the night, I wake up hearing Maxine’s voice in my head. It seems we’ve become a pair.