First Light, Last Lightby Glen SorestadPublished by Shadowpaw PressReview by Brandon Fick$19.99 ISBN 9781998273461 First Light, Last Light is a fitting title for a poetry collection that concerns itself with the beginning and end of human life, lost and recovered memories, the rhythmic cycle of the seasons, and glimpses of natural life in the early dawn of spring or the cold, shadowy dusk of winter. Glen Sorestad, one of Saskatchewan’s elder literary statesman, its first Poet Laureate, and co-founder of Thistledown Press, has compiled a book without pretension. Many of Sorestad’s poems are written from personal experience, meditating on his parents, brother, or children, a bulldozed childhood farm and disappeared dog, or more recently, medical appointments and the strange rituals of the pandemic. He also proves to be a keen observer of birds. All of this adds up to a satisfying portrait of a man. In “Part One: The Human Touch,” Sorestad fluctuates between poeticizing contemporary life and excavating the past, with an emphasis on the latter. In fact, there is a poem titled “Excavation: Mount Pleasant Public School,” provoked by a photo, as a number are in this section. This 1940s school in Vancouver “long gone to wrecking ball…