Orphan
For Chad
The family spoke a mother tongue
but it was alien and not his for those days
so inward he angled his words
to a universe of memory he had been
crafting for years. The colors of stones
were the names of his siblings.
Yellow light of dusk he drank the hours of
grew to be the sound time made
when he slept in the golden
hand of his dreams. Mornings
he awoke to everything white
expanse of sheet could measure
and then he carried distance
until it became his father.
Bio: Scott Bade earned his Ph.D. in Creative Writing at Western Michigan University where he is also the coordinator of the WMU Center for the Humanities. He is a former poetry editor for Third Coast Magazine and editorial assistant at New Issues Press. His poems have appeared in Fugue, Parthenon West Review, H_NGM_N, Foothill and others.