LYDIA MCMILLAN is 19. She comes from Penpont but is currently living and studying in Edinburgh. She won creative writing prizes at school and has recently begun to submit her poetry to literary magazines.
Here in this poem her grey mood and surroundings find themselves mirrored perfectly by a sudden glimpse of the cosmos.
Eleven pm
by Lydia McMillan
Eleven pm, brown snow scarred
with cigarette butts and the blind
stencilling of drunks and stray cats.
By the bins some students smoke,
their eyes darting like candles,
their laughter rising like larks over the rooftops.
I pass them, most likely lost in some
morose chain of thought or another,
and the clouds crumble and give way
to a constellation whose name I don’t know-
a small bright dead thing, like the larks.
I pause in the cold air and watch
the future turn on its axis,
spin away through the snow.
© Lydia McMillan, March 2021
Big Bang's Star Poets series is curated by Hugh McMillan