Guest Poem by David Gilbert

David Gilbert's first full collection was The Rare Bird Recovery Protocol (Cinnamon Press, 2020). He's had three pamphlets published prior to that: Liberian Pygmy Hippopotamus (Templar), Elephants Fragile (Cinnamon), and ReCollections (Bethlem Gallery, where he is Writer in Residence). He's had poems published in The Rialto, Magma, Smiths Knoll, Brittle Star, South Bank Magazine, and Interpreter's House and anthologies (incl. This Line is Not For Turning) He is a NHS Director, run his own consultancy business, a former mental health service user and author of 'The Patient Revolution - how to heal the healthcare system' (Jessica Kingsley Press, 2019). He is a born and bred Londoner and supports Leeds Utd.

Be The Vines

Take me with you
so I won’t have to write from such distance again

or resort to sing-song
across the tumultuous blue

then be hedged by silence when
you leave me in your trails,

those dissolving beads and curlicues of sky.

Let’s more often
twine our fingers, be
the vines
guesting into each other’s garden.