Welcome to 31 Days of Poetry & Writing Prompts–Day 5.

The House on the Hill

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

They are all gone away;

The House is shut and still,

There is nothing more to say.

Through broken walls and gray

The winds blow bleak and shrill

They are all gone away.

Nor is there one to-day

To speak them good or ill:

There is nothing more to say.

Why is it then we stay

Around that sunken sill?

They are all gone away,

And our poor fancy-play

For them is wasted skill:

There is nothing more to say.

There is rain and decay

In the House on the Hill:

They have all gone away,

There is nothing more to say.

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I drive past the house every day, on the way or way back to school.

It’s become my daily drive’s daydream.

I think there’s a wide blue desk in front of that great window, robin’s egg blue, and so many books like good old friends line the office walls. She sits there, clicking away letters on her keyboard, trading glances between lake and green.

She’s a little lonely, there with the laundry and the dog and the shelves of old books. But soon the kids will be home again, so there’s an urgency.

Now it’s time to make word counts, and now it’s time to make words count.

The golfers keep her company, in a far-off way. She watches them saunter through weekdays in packs, with all their caddies and carts and bags. Today they leave the workday behind, some of them forever.

She wonders, do they love their own winter season, with long days of work behind them?

Or do they dream every day of their summer, even fall, the good old days of building and dealing and keeping up?

She sees only a piece of the game, only one hole visible from the front window. Sometimes they seem to be having the time of their lives, she notices, and other times they’re bottling anger. And isn’t that just the way life works?

What would it be like to take up golf now? To throw the work away and run off to play with friends the entire afternoon?

What would it be like to live in the house on the hill on the course before the lake?

To know this is where we are meant to be. This is right. This is settled. This is home now.

I wish I knew.

I dream of seeing a For Sale sign in the yard. I dream of settling deep down in there, just off the parkway.

But there are a lot of rooms in that house. A lot of windows to keep clean. It’s an awfully big house to stay in alone all day. Even with the books and the dog and the laundry. Even with the golfers swinging by.

It’s not the kind of house you dream of keeping to yourself all day. It should be hosting lunches and book clubs and pool parties and people.

It should be doing something. Something more than listening to typewriter keys and the churning washer and the dog, barking again at people passing by.

Something more than waiting for the fountain’s next spray like clockwork in the middle of the lake.

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