Two Poems (properly formatted)

Hostages 

I’m galloping towards you like I’m desperate to tell you something
yet you remain in that small room
writing of clouds that look like smoke
and all this time, children are being torn apart.

This is me screaming 
on Sunday nights, taking out the bins.
There are trains 
in the evening that rumble to the echo of my heartbeat.
I’m unsure whether I am there or here.

Tonight is all eyes. 
I’ve lost all language and my throat is dry.
Mostly there are fables that I repeatedly inherit then rip apart,
stray cats outside the monastery wandering for scraps.
Words remain hostages in blue-black citadels
with only pain to lean on.

Let’s talk quietly particularly 
when there is so little understanding.

The lights at the shoreline are reflected equally  
across the stratosphere. Footfalls 

and rain and tenderness 
are what’s left when this night falls away.

We step upon so many dead bodies 
in order to arrive.

Birds As

The town has grown quieter. 
The stones are seen for what they are. 
Echoes of rain.

The hawk at daybreak swallows all sound. 
The wind fractures the man  
and he is forever flown through. 

He saw a kingfisher once
and she by his side said to him:
‘Perhaps that is a good omen’

Paused by a Northern river
careering past the disused mill
he felt that he was inhabited throughout  
by a flock of starlings

and he climbed back up the valley 
for the last time.

Birds as ghosts birds as guides birds for every lane 
he has been carried down

The arguments don’t slow. 
We are taught what we didn’t know 
we needed to learn.

Every Saturday now he comes 
to the same spot and whispers Psalm 23 under the trees.

He listens now rather than looks. 
A woodpecker returns to the same underside 
of the same branch, repeatedly,
hammering out its bass tap-tap-tap.   




© 2025 David Gilbert