Language is a house we live in, and grammar, the housekeeper who posts the rules on the door to each room we enter: This is how we say things here. The housekeeper insists on proper sentences, but love speaks in fragments and unfinished lines. Some rooms are locked for being too unruly, their language deemed improper. And though the housekeeper sweeps the same dust daily, the walls keep forgetting their shape. The windows of the house look out on what we call trees because that is what we have agreed to call them instead of spiders or dogs.
When it comes to language and describing things in poetic terms, I've never been bound too much by rules regarding what I can or cannot say, but there are some experiences for which the right words have as yet eluded me because language itself is a construct and imposes its own limits on us, given that each word has been allotted a particular meaning, and it's quite a challenge sometimes to use them to describe things that are possibly beyond their scope. Maybe we need to build an extension onto the house of language where some guru can sit and describe our world more accurately with an awesome silence. Love this, Paul.
A Playful Reply to Paul’s “Language is a House” (see below)
Paul, your house of language delights me, but I suspect the housekeeper has no idea that the windows are conspiring with the unruly rooms to let love wander barefoot through the halls, leaving fragments she can never sweep away. Let me get into it.
Your house of language is charming, but I suspect the housekeeper has been taking herself far too seriously. She polishes her rules until they shine, yet the sentences keep tracking mud across the floor as if on purpose.
I’ve noticed the windows gossip among themselves about what counts as a tree today and whether the horizon is truly behaving. They pretend to be reliable, but the moment we carry one outside, it panics like a cat in a rainstorm.
As for those locked rooms—I’m convinced they aren’t unruly at all. They’re simply throwing a party that the housekeeper wasn’t invited to. The dust is confetti. The silence is music. The grammar is optional.
And love, of course, wanders through the hallways barefoot, leaving half‑finished lines like breadcrumbs for anyone brave enough to follow. If eviction ever comes, I imagine we’ll simply build a new house out of whatever fragments we’ve pocketed—a window here, a misplaced rule there, and perhaps a tree that refuses to answer to its name. After all, the housekeeper may keep her ledger, but we keep the keys to the rooms she fortuitously never enters.
The windows (another example of structure) provide us with the correct view or gloss on what comprises the outside world—to ensure we meet that outside world, we take the windows with us to ensure we are seeing what we have agreed exists there.
To see the world without windows, i.e. according to preconceived notions, gives us a much different world.
The line about carrying the window when we step outside is the one that does the most work. You can leave the house but you can't leave the frame that taught you what counts as a hole or a tree. the housekeeper following you across the lawn.
Thank you for sharing this poem, @Marpy Hayse
Thanks to @Wendy Gray gir this restack 💜💜
Good Tuesday, @Maureen Doallas, and thank you for restacking my poem.
My pleasure, Paul.
Thanks to Pieces of Poetry and @Stanley Wotring for sharing this poem!
Grateful to @Blue Citizen 77 for this restack—thank you, Diane 💙💙
💙💙💙
Good Tuesday, @Earl Nobdy, and thank you for restacking my poem.
Thanks to @Connie J. Casella for restacking this poem.
Grateful to @mitch for this restack—thank you, my Friend.
When it comes to language and describing things in poetic terms, I've never been bound too much by rules regarding what I can or cannot say, but there are some experiences for which the right words have as yet eluded me because language itself is a construct and imposes its own limits on us, given that each word has been allotted a particular meaning, and it's quite a challenge sometimes to use them to describe things that are possibly beyond their scope. Maybe we need to build an extension onto the house of language where some guru can sit and describe our world more accurately with an awesome silence. Love this, Paul.
It would be fun to mess up the house just to see her reaction! Then, leave quickly!
I think poetry might make the kind of mess that might shock her sense of tidiness, Carole. e.e. cummings might be an unruly tenant.
Oh, I like the way you think Carole I’m right behind you
Housekeeper’s Day Off
When Language Stops Pretending to Behave
A Playful Reply to Paul’s “Language is a House” (see below)
Paul, your house of language delights me, but I suspect the housekeeper has no idea that the windows are conspiring with the unruly rooms to let love wander barefoot through the halls, leaving fragments she can never sweep away. Let me get into it.
Your house of language is charming, but I suspect the housekeeper has been taking herself far too seriously. She polishes her rules until they shine, yet the sentences keep tracking mud across the floor as if on purpose.
I’ve noticed the windows gossip among themselves about what counts as a tree today and whether the horizon is truly behaving. They pretend to be reliable, but the moment we carry one outside, it panics like a cat in a rainstorm.
As for those locked rooms—I’m convinced they aren’t unruly at all. They’re simply throwing a party that the housekeeper wasn’t invited to. The dust is confetti. The silence is music. The grammar is optional.
And love, of course, wanders through the hallways barefoot, leaving half‑finished lines like breadcrumbs for anyone brave enough to follow. If eviction ever comes, I imagine we’ll simply build a new house out of whatever fragments we’ve pocketed—a window here, a misplaced rule there, and perhaps a tree that refuses to answer to its name. After all, the housekeeper may keep her ledger, but we keep the keys to the rooms she fortuitously never enters.
In His Good Hands with Playfulness,
—Simply Richard
Please try referring to: https://wittenberger.substack.com/p/language-is-a-house?r=3ea8ga&utm_medium=ios&shareImageVariant=app
I love this response, Richard! Thank you!🙏 😊
The metaphor is really working for me. I was particularly taken with this:
we must carry the window with us,
else we are apt to stumble
over a dog or be bitten by the spider
or fall into a hole in the horizon.
The windows (another example of structure) provide us with the correct view or gloss on what comprises the outside world—to ensure we meet that outside world, we take the windows with us to ensure we are seeing what we have agreed exists there.
To see the world without windows, i.e. according to preconceived notions, gives us a much different world.
... all that and we get protection from dogs and spiders and holes, oh my!
I like how fun and light this poem is, yet still a little serious.
Thank you, Michael. I think it's a bit of both—at least I was hoping it would be read that way.
The line about carrying the window when we step outside is the one that does the most work. You can leave the house but you can't leave the frame that taught you what counts as a hole or a tree. the housekeeper following you across the lawn.
The housekeeper has very strong ideas about tenants adhering to the rules she has posted.
And the lease is always month to month. We never quite get to own the place!
We could go on a rent strike. Tell the old bat we’re tired of the same old windows. We could do that on our own—we don’t need a copilot.
Copilot is the trick word. Even the rent strike chant comes out in polite English. We can refuse the rules and still owe her the meter.
Good poem.
Thank you for reading and commenting, David. Your letters to your daughters project sounds like a wonderful gift to and for them!
Love the metaphor! Though I often disagree with the housekeeper.
Thank you, Harley. I feel the same way!
The funny thing is that in my post in Creative Seeds today I discuss breaking the rules.