A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House
Tom Driscoll
Ode to Joy
The difference between noise and music
maybe isn’t as plain as you’d think.
It’s not even something you can discern
from the sound itself—frequency—pitch—rhythm.
What separates one from the other is the listening.
They say no one ever saw the color blue
until someone named it. Before then the sky
was simply vacancy. Then, suddenly, it was seen.
Music is like that. Sound is sound is sound.
Everywhere and nothing.
Then something calls—or is it something answers?
I gave my son and his wife tickets to the symphony.
Beethoven’s Ninth—music composed by a man
who had lost his hearing—lost it in the literal sense.
We talked, my son and I, just the other day
about what he read in the program notes
how history had failed Beethoven when he wrote that music.
His ideals were dead or dying things, befitting the funereal,
but the poem, the plea, the prayer—he heard it.
Tom Driscoll is the author of the poetry collection The Champion of Doubt (Finishing Line Press, 2023). His poetry has appeared in Letter Review, Rock Salt Journal, Abraxas Review, Oddball Magazine, Carcosa Review, and other journals. A columnist and essayist as well as a poet, Driscoll lives and works in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Indolent Books and editor Michael Broder are back with another poem-a-day series as a creative response to the threat posed to our democracy by the current occupant of the White House. The plan is to continue for all 1460 days of the 47th American presidency.
Find out how to submit poems or flash prose pieces to Second Coming.
If you like Second Coming and you want to support it, consider making a donation to Indolent Arts, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit fiscal sponsor of Indolent Books.
You can use the form below to donate as little as $1.00 (not visible in the email version of this post) or use this link to visit our donation page where you can donate as little as $1.00 or choose titles from the Indolent Books catalogue as thank-you gifts for donations starting at $25.00—The more you give, the more thank-you gift books you get, up to six books for a donation of $100 or more.