Tom Driscoll Writing
I hear her stir the small jar
of paint she’s mixed and know
she’s found the quiet needed to work.
Snow hasn’t yet fallen this winter.
I pick at this.
That poem about the green tomato
was supposed to be the new start
I’d promised myself, to step away from the dark.
That poem about the green tomato
was supposed to change things,
loose my loving tongue on its voluptuous
surface—simple music—
To Hannah
after L. Cohen
It’s early in the morning, the last days
of April. I write you now that
the weather’s improving.
Spring’s seeming late this year,
the skies have been darker.
You’ll not come back here, I know.
Those songs I collected
that insulted California,
they were never intended
to change your mind.
I’m told that you wept last time you called.
Another courageous decision you made.
What can I tell you that you don’t already know?
Courage is rough on the brave.
I see you there with the flowers and light
that you’ve found, your drive across the desert
your lover beside you — what more could I wish for you?
— what more could I give?
I’m thinking of another song right now
born out of a more complicated love than mine.
It’s just that sometimes it’s easier
to misappropriate a line
even as it guesses wrong colors
how I — miss and — forgive you,
can confess of my faults,
how with that off my chest I could send this
without the slightest grain of salt.
Those songs I collected
that insulted California,
they were never intended
to change your mind.
Sincerely,
your father.
•
“To Hannah” appears in April: 30 Poems
The puzzle’s large enough —the image
that of a sweet, sunny summer afternoon: a man lazes
in a hammock wearing a paper hat and drinking
a pint glass of Guinness Stout,
an advertisement from 1960.
When was it? —just the other day we found ourselves
explaining the same thing
to each other about that balance one needs to strike
between aching for that one piece you need to find,
convincing yourself it’s lost or doesn’t exist,
then go-finding some other fitting shape
given up on previously,
how you claim finding —that— your due reward
for genius not luck—how ten more pieces
then fall into place so effortlessly.
The art of this process: pressing
then not pressing for result.
Soon we’ll likely finish; might leave the thing
out a day or two.
Then it will be put back in the box, broken down again
into a thousand pieces.
I mention this at breakfast and, before I can tell her
I’ve made the same connection, she compares this
to the way those Buddhist monks regathered the sand
painting they’d done: an intricately patterned mandala
composed, grain by colored grain.
Weeks of work; we’d watched them at it
then the ritual when finished: sand swept into a bucket,
carried in solemn procession across the college campus
to the edge of a pond.
Unintelligible prayer-chants, then silence.
The sand thrown in clouds over the water.
A whispering sound as each particle struck
the water’s surface.
—kiss—kiss—kiss—
My mother’s old wry line comes to mind.
“Kiss it up to God,” she’d say.
—kiss—kiss—kiss—
It was advice about disappointment, I think,
about letting it go, or accepting it, usually meant
more as humor than wisdom.
“Kiss it up to God.”
I hear her voice and wonder
if I’ll find the place for that to fit.
We’d’ve come stumbling from our beds,
your boys, half naked and shivering
to brave that slick steep stair in stocking feet
knowing you waited below
by that folding metal ironing board
with its worn silver-cloth cover,
the padding torn, the surface scorched
in places, blackened, burned through.
For each of us it was the same:
that humid gasp and sigh
as the iron was turned upright
weight of it placed in precarious balance;
you’d hand us the scalded grey flannel trousers
we were to wear that day
and each knew that pleasure as his own:
the warm cloth on cool skin—
each received this sensual gift
no matter his history.
There was no sin particular
to any one or the other of us.
stars in daylight
it’s not they’re gone
voices still softly speaking
amid the blind noise
just as stones move underfoot
slow flotsam at forever’s depth
time’s echoing increment
the one idea of your life almost realized
the mountain crests like a breaking wave
—shadow cast upon itself
does not find more darkness.
O— how I wish I was making more sense.
There’re stories we live not reading
them or ever knowing
they exist.
She asked me, ‘Who’s that singer —you know the one
—that singer who isn’t Lou Gehrig—not him—
who was that singer who —wasn’t— Lou Gehrig?’
All of them, I answered
as I don’t believe the ballplayer ever sang.
If instead it described rain
fallen on dark soil, one pale flower
where no one would believe a seed had ever fallen
—where granite clasts —broken through
—showed so slightly proud
and if this fiction weren’t actually
about forgetting or ignoring, but rather
about finding —just the one tender fact
—that stone awash in a turbulent stream
—to take it up, only to weigh it in your hand.
A Craft Essay in Abraxas Review
https://www.abraxasreview.org/features/about-rules-a-craft-essay-by-tom-driscoll
Ask again
for that morning,
the sun not risen yet,
the radio on the counter
drones and whines and squeals
seeking signal.
Look out the kitchen window,
past the sink, still with its last-night dishes,
across the misty yard
to that thin strand of woods
then the grassy playing field just beyond.
The static calms now, noise becomes music.
Ray Charles sings
of—Grace —Brotherhood
—America, America
about loving —mercy more than life.
Naked from the waist, my father,
readied for his morning shave,
leaves hot water running in the basin,
steps from the hall bathroom
to join me in the moment’s majesty,
looking out, watching that still lightless field
—everyone else in the house so safely sleeping.
As Heron appeared it was already leaving.
Maybe I am the one that scared it from its place
in among the river birch and undergrowth, the banks
this side of the river.
Maybe I can look at what I once wrote thinking you
—always thinking you— would read it.
I told a friend about this hollow feeling,
feeling like the residue left inside a lost wax mold.
Something about about fire, about wanting to be burned away.
The day your father was born, one thousand miles away,
his grandfather walked out into the woods behind his house
and cut a small dogwood branch with the perfect y-shaped fork
for a slingshot. He would use rubber laboratory tubing
for bands, an old leather scrap for the pocket.
Like with anything and everything he’s ever made
by hand, your great-grandfather took his time
on each detail—where leather fastened to the bands,
and each band to the wood. I can see him now,
when the notion first came to him, setting off
with his work gloves and a pruning shears, already
one particular branch in mind for the project.
It was Christmas when that slingshot arrived in a box
of other presents sent for the newborn’s first holiday. It wasn’t
wrapped like the other things. There was just a yellow post-it note
with your father’s name written in your great grandfather’s hand.
Tom Driscoll Writing 