Jim McDonald Poems

London
I walk every day under your heavy skies
the grey lid that covers your people.
I walk your filthy streets and step past
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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.
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for Jack Kerouac (1922-69)

Jack the America of your dreams is gone
Gone the brownstone tenements of the night
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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.
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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.
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Normandy
The path of your seasons is heavy on my heart
Wild winter gales
The early breath of spring-time air
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Gardening yesterday I lifted a large log
and uncovered a teeming party of life.
Woodlice scuttled away
An earwig made its hurried passage to safety.
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On a warm May morning I am invigilating a pointless Government exam
when a child asks eagerly,
“How much time left...? ”
A question better than any on his exam paper.
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open sky washed clean by a night of rain
sharp breath of autumn covering everything
London almost pleasant in the 6 a.m. dawn light
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At first the patter of a couple of raindrops
Increasing in frequency
Tacklings and cracklings
onto the glass roof above
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