Childhood tongue by Daniel G Scott

Poet name: Childhood tongue Poem name: Daniel G Scott Poem: It was a language no one knew except my younger brother. We always knew  what the other one was saying. At least, I knew what he was saying when no one else did. I was a translator helping my brother who spoke a language clear to me become clear to others.  I think it is  what I still do – try to do. Make what is not clear, heard even though, in order for my brother to learn his mother tongue, I was forbidden to translate for him.  We still speak on the phone every week and I still listen for his first voice with affection, worry what he won’t say. Wonder if translation is needed. End of poem.  Credits and bio: Copyright © Daniel G Scott Daniel G Scott, past Artistic Director of Planet Earth Poetry and producer for Poets Caravan, has recently published Aftertime (2019) and Voicing Suicide (2020), an anthology of suicide poems he edited, as well as [klee-shays] undone, volume one (2020). Aeolus House will be releasing Travels with Athóma in the fall of 2022. With Ekstasis Editions, he has previously published gnarled love, terrains, Random Excess and aftertime, as well as black onion and two chapbooks: street signs and Interrupted with Goldfinch Press.  His first chapbook was Pyramid and other dreams (The Purple Wednesday Society, 1983). He has individual poems in journals, anthologies and chapbooks as well as numerous academic publications and, with Shannon McFerran, The Girls Diary Project (University of Victoria, 2013). He won a one-act playwriting competition in New Brunswick in 1984.