Freewriting from prompt…

I only need to look up to see greenery, trees, shielding me. The view from here is my favourite oak, taller than the house and so grand it hurts. How many hundreds of years has it stood on this lane watching over this place? My place. Our place. The view from here is the sycamore and the poplar. I got worried when its leaves didn’t come back as fast as the others, but maybe poplars just take their time. The view from here is the bridge over the river, where the willows weep beside ash and elm and alder. The view from here reminds me how lucky I am, though none of this is truly mine, it is. It is. 

I only need to wander to the back windows to look out on something close to glory. Something close to perfect. Something that feeds my soul in a way that nothing else can. The view from here is a garden full of trees and shrubs and flowers, where chickens peck and the dogs bury bones, and the old tire swings from the fir tree, still going strong after fifteen years. Where the horses in the field snort and graze, where the deer trot furtively from the woods as the sunlight fades. The view from here is sunsets and early morning mist. The view from here is lapwings and buzzards and red kites and badgers and foxes. The view from here is safe, for now.

The view from here makes me dizzy, when the memories rush in, one here, one there, a little boy with socks on his hands pulling a funny face, being rolled down the hill in a tire, being buried in a hole, little baby jabbing at a mud hole with a stick, little girl firing arrows to be like Katniss, little girl and her little chicks cupped in her little hands, and bbqs and trampolining and drinking cider while the sun goes down on us all, and firepits and marshmallows and games of football and tennis and tag and when it was lockdown we made the garden our outdoor gym, and jumped from log to log, twirled and spun and laughed at our own rules, and threw eggs out of the window in a parachute that didn’t work and looked out of the windows at the still silent world.

And that was then. And this is now. And we are still here.

The view from here grounds me. Reminds me: who I am, who we are, what we did, who we loved, how we lived. The view from here changes with the seasons, and in the autumn the garden is covered in leaves, and in the winter the ground is crunchy with frost, and in the spring the green is creeping back to shield us, and in the summer the grass dries out and the sun never seems to go to bed…

The view from here is good.

The view from here is us.