Friday, December 06, 2013

Poetry Friday: Sounds from this House

I am knee deep in grading, final exams to write, and assorted other end of the semester tasks.  But I'm popping in to link you to a poem I contributed to our school's online literary journal (first issue just out this week).  The poem is called "Sounds from this House."  I wrote down the idea a long time ago, because I had noticed that the sounds out of every window of our house are different.  I decided to catalog them.  I didn't intend for the poem to be about the earthquake, but somehow it got in there; at the time, everything I wrote was about the earthquake in one way or another. 

Sounds from this House, Delmas 83, Haiti

Listen:
There is a different sound from each bedroom in this house.
Upstairs, you can hear the conversations next door,
Loud voices speaking Kreyol,
Cajoling, joking, insulting,
Sometimes shouts, and a few times, even a gunshot.
There are parties and vodou ceremonies,
Music and drumming through the night.
From the other window, church wafts in;
Singing, preaching, microphone-amplified.

You can read the rest here.

And Robyn Hood Black has today's roundup here.


8 comments:

jama said...

Love all the vivid sensory images in your poem, Ruth. Great ending, too.

Good luck with all your grading and exam writing.

Tabatha said...

Ruth, your poem made me give a contented sigh and immediately copy it to send my daughter and some friends. Really nice work.

Linda B said...

It's beautiful, Ruth, and collected until that rumble, then discord, then quiet again. It seems you captured that time from your memory so well. I wrote about the sounds in my house, but only on a summer evening. When quiet, one can hear much. Thank you!

GatheringBooks said...

Ruth, this is beautiful. Thanks for sharing this. Hope you have space to breathe this week.

Liz Steinglass said...

Ruth, this is so lovely and moving. Thank you for sharing your world with us.

Mary Lee said...

I think you probably can't take the earthquake out and have it still be authentic Haiti! Thanks for the field trip!

Michelle Heidenrich Barnes said...

Ruth, your poem carried me to a place which was entirely unfamiliar, yet strangely familiar at the same. What a whirlwind cacophony-- a glorious din... and then the whisper of dreams. Wow.

Violet N. said...

Powerful writing. The details make them both real. The ending of the sound poem just tugs at the heart. I'm glad you wrote that sonnet instead of quizzes!