Charlene James-Duguid’s most recent poem to appear here was “All I Can Thank You With Is Words” (January 2018)

Confession
By Charlene James-Duguid

My grandmother, who used her little scale
To weigh each meal during Lent,
Would not know what to make of it.

‘What, no numbers, no sobbing,
No penance of a hundred rosaries a day
For the next month?
How can God forgive, if you were let off so
Easy?”

‘I don’t know, Granny, all I can say
Is that times,
And maybe even God, change.”