Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read “Sonnet for the First Day” by Barbara Pelman.

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Sonnet for the First Day

By Barbara Pelman

I wonder how long I can keep this up,

these New Year’s resolutions, all the things

I hope I can change in me. The same list

from six years ago, still trying. Here I am

in my eighth decade, weak-kneed and it seems

weak-willed, three friends gone

in the last month yet my mother,

near the end of her tenth decade, still

on the couch looking at the news. What’s

indigenous, she asks. What’s climate change?

Her tiny world: bed, bathroom, dining table,

couch, then bed. How do we go on,

breath by breath, as the world burns.

Trying, then failing, then trying again.

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Copyright © Barbara Pelman

Barbara Pelman is a retired English teacher in Victoria BC, and a poet. She is an assistant at Planet Earth Poetry and conducts poetry workshops in her home. She has 4 published books of poetry (“One Stone”, “Borrowed Rooms”, “Narrow Bridge” and her latest, “A Brief and Endless Sea”) and a chapbook (“Aubade Amalfi”), as well as poems in literary journals and anthologies. She is often in Vancouver, visiting family and caring for her 108 year old mother.

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