The prompt today (which you can read here) was to write about windows.

Kitchen window

If you grade windows like envelopes, this one’s a stamp.

It cuts postcard-shaped scraps from fell and field;

the same view snipped clear for four hundred years,

pasted in the minds and memories of monks, then farmers,

farmers wives and daughters, later, shearers when,

fallen on shabby times, this house was used as a barn.

 

That shearer glanced up at the same patch of Great Pasture

we stand and stare at now; wiped his brow on his forearm,

stood tall to straighten an aching back; level-gazed that stile

you can see, just past the hip of the hill; brushed at scraps

of sheared wool stuck to sweat-slicked cheeks, tried to spit

them away. Swilled water back, his canvas flask filled from the beck

at the bottom of our track, on his way up to work. We’re still

not on the grid; water comes from a spring. We have pipes

now, and taps that flow steady. We gather wild garlic in May,

down by the beck. What would he say to our wild garlic pesto?