I grew up poor enough that for the long South Alabama summers — years vary but it is generally hot enough from May through September to likely require some degree of cooling — and from that time period got to crave the sound of a fan on a quiet day and to help me sleep. Sometimes, when the only real sound is that flow of air and the white noise of a motor you kind of hear something not unlike whispers. Or water. Non-sounds as you brain fills in blanks in the static.
The whiskey rich noise of the fan's unsound Whispers midnight to me In a vibratto falsetto, And I feel a need, an undesirable but Unquenchable call To listen to it as if it were words, A conversationalized sigh, But for lack of a friend And nor for lack of a wife, A life, But because, well, we sometimes talk To things, For better for all the while. The stars drip overhead, pour down To the horizon And the silence that is the great Dome of sky Resonates quietly for hours. "There it goes," Says the fan. "There it goes, A million fools repeating, again, the thing They have been doing all along. Falling down. Screaming song." "There it goes," The fan is off again, By which I mean on and running Incessantly, On some other topic I have failed To keep up with, Because I have been barely paying attention, "Right out of its head. Right out of its head." The bed creaks. I roll over. The night continues on.