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Tom Driscoll is a poet, columnist, and essayist. He lives in Lowell, Massachusetts with his wife, artist Denise Driscoll. The Champion of Doubt was published in the summer 2023 from Finishing Line Press. Previously, he had released several collections of poetry, including Odd Numbers and Absence Singing as well as a volume of song lyrics, Songs For All The Wrong Reasons and Personal Histories a collection of short prose. Tom’s poem Duty Leave Home won the Robert P. Collén Poetry Prize in 2017. Notes on Demolition was selected an Editor’s Choice for the Allen Ginsberg Prize and This isn’t the first time received Third Place in The Frank O’Hara Prize, both in 2021.

Tom Driscoll

Paul

Yeah, I’ve missed a couple of meetings lately.
He stops a shiver, half-gestures
a laugh at his own expense as he lifts the blunt
cupped in his hand toward me in offer.
I missed Addicts Group today, too —you can see
how well that one’s going —smoke?

I tell him I’m already dull-witted and paranoid
enough without the assistance, thank you.
He smiles, takes in a long deep drag.
I’m still working on that, he says, closes his eyes, leans back
and I worry he’s mistaken my self-deprecation for insult.
Maybe I should go, maybe he’s embarrassed
—found out, failing.

What I thought I knew about Paul, I’d taken from the book
he was trying to write about a man in mid-life, a man puzzled
by his own sadness, mulling his gripes and griefs,
something strangely stinging in how he loved, was loved.
The relationship between the novel’s protagonist and daughter
character
—one could tell Paul actually had a daughter.

This park bench faces the river rolling by. When I read Paul my poem
a few weeks back, the one about the cormorant drying its wings
in a yogin’s tree pose out there on a rock, he told me
he knew just the rock I was talking about.

You, you always try for somewhere slow and easy, but me
—me, I’m calling from between a rock and a hard place,

my very own Scylla and Charybdis
—or maybe it’s Laverne and Shirley —see how my head works

—less taste —great filling
—that noise —my mind—the language, not the story, not—

I don’t know, really, I don’t.
But there might be something—trying.

He’s leaned forward now, opened his eyes, his beet red eyes.
The two of us watch the water a while, wordless.

— Tom Driscoll

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