The Sounds of a House
Aug 24 2014


The fridge rumbles to life.

Something creaks, drips, chimes.

Fans whirr, a mouse scurries,
the furnace
clicks, and ignites.

A wonky shutter

slams shut
with a heart-stopping thud.

The sounds of a house
when no one's home
carry on, regardless.
And like the fridge
purring along, inaudibly,
we only hear them
when they stop.

It's absence
we notice
most of all.
Like after somebody's gone,
and we sit, vigilant
in an empty house
on the lip of an unbearable void.
Waiting
to feel it filled.


Wow! I had absolutely no idea where this poem was going to go. I sat down, in the mood to write, but with nothing in mind. Which is not at all unusual.

"Wow" not only because the ending snuck up on me, but because I quickly lost that mood, had trouble getting started, and then felt like forgetting the whole thing because it was going nowhere fast. But I've learned not to worry about good or bad, keeper or reject. Just put down on paper whatever comes to mind: I may manage to salvage it later, or it may open me up to something better.

I heard some fans whirring. I wondered if that was the wind picking up, perhaps a harbinger of storm. The fridge rumbled off, and suddenly what had seemed perfectly quiet was now deathly still: the way we habituate to sound, until it disappears. So I had this idea of "the sounds of a house" -- perhaps the house as a living thing, personified -- and went into automatic writing mode. Which sounds mystical and supernatural, but isn't at all. It's just how, when you're in a creative space, that lovely sense of flow feels: focused, oblivious, immersed.

It was the fridge stopping that led me to "absence". And I think it was the contrast between "house" and "home" -- where "house" has the indifference of a building; and where "home" signifies comfort more than place -- that led me to the emptiness of departure: perhaps a lost love, perhaps a death. "The sounds of a house/ when no one's home" was the first thing I put down on the page, so that distinction was present from the beginning: that it's not truly a home when no one's there.

Looking back, the opening stanza contains some unintentional foreshadowing. The creaks and drips and wonky hinge, the scurrying mouse, the stopped heart: there is a premonition of something slightly off.

In the middle stanza, "indifferent" is a very inviting alternative to "regardless". There is, for one, an easy rhyme with "fridge". And I suppose it expresses the idea more explicitly. But for some reason, I keep coming back to "regardless". Perhaps it's the implicit shrug I hear in it, the slightly apathetic quality it shares with a resigned breathy whatever.

I suspect the poem would be more powerful in a singular voice: I instead of we. But there is also power in the appeal to shared experience, to commonality: we all notice the fridge only when it stops; we all notice absence most of all. Nevertheless, I would have liked to have used "I sit ...". It's definitely stronger and more poignant than "we sit ...". But changing voice mid-stream just doesn't work.

This poem is a great example of "less is more". It always seem to be these short ones I like best. I think because they don't try to do too much. And because they're distilled, economical; which is, after all, the essential business of poetry.

There is, as usual, nothing autobiographical here. It's language that takes be by the hand, and leads me on; not personal experience.