Poems by Debbie Gilbert

The East Troublesome Fire, October 2020

Perhaps it’s not the poet anymore
who writes the poem.
—Aleksandr Blok

by Debbie Gilbert

From Canary Fall 2021

Debbie lives in a Connecticut woodland surrounded by the Purgatory Brook which collects snowmelt and rainwaters from Talcott Mountain and carries them to the Farmington River where the river turns northward.

The horses are screaming.
Their nostrils flare
and they suck in a black mid-day sky
while winds fill with acrid ash
and instinct begs, Run.
They run.
Run with coyotes and the prairie dogs.
And the hollowed-aspen owlets can’t keep up.
Are shadows born in the light of flames?
The Front Range is burning.

Smoke is in the pasture.
There’s orange in the hills.
And the sheriff posts pink notices
on barn doors— Go.
Close the gates and write a note:
a phone number on a duct-taped hoof.

Load four in a two-horse trailer—
two pregnant mares,
two colts still wet.
The Front Range is burning.
Release the herd over the Great Divide—
East toward Estes and Loveland.

Remington, Wrigley, Slick, and Satchmo—
Who stays? Who goes?
The trails are no longer marked.
Fill the prairie troughs with water
and watch the horses go.

Blue Jeans Tilly is at a full gallop—
all four hooves lift from hot scorched land.
The Earth itself is thundering
and the air slices aside—
a charred world is underfoot,
a sliver open to new sky.
Bless the starred black horse
with the one blue eye.
Give her water.