Jim McDonald Biography

London
I walk every day under your heavy skies
the grey lid that covers your people.
I walk your filthy streets and step past
...

I met my grandfather again last night –
strange, as he died in 1998.
World Cup Year.
I spent some time filling him in on what had gone on since.
...

for Jack Kerouac (1922-69)

Jack the America of your dreams is gone
Gone the brownstone tenements of the night
...

Spent an hour in the morning moving a wood-pile
from near the house where they need to lay pipes
to a copse I cleared two years ago
of a mountain of twenty year hawthorn and briar.
...

On a crisp Kent Autumn morning
My father throwing sticks, tennis balls, even his car keys
into a brown horsechestnut tree.
Down came showers of leaves and conkers.
...