October
Fourteen was the number of the bus
that took me to St Cloud,
the house at number fourteen in the square,
a Georgian house turned into flats –
fourteen occupants lived there.
Three students on the first floor- that was us;
three nurses on the ground;
St Cloud at fourteen in the square,
“topped and tailed” by eight young men
buzzed with come-and-go, the callings there.
Three times fourteen years have passed;
I walk and watch the falling leaves,
wish it were that October now –
in the house that hummed like a hive of bees.
Gill McEvoy: winner of the 2015 Michael Marks Award for The First Telling, Happenstance Press. Hawthornden Fellow. Two full collections from Cinnamon Press.