What's on the other side?

This prompt's theme skirts around the idea of the 'bare minimum'. Taking the simplicity of your surroundings and giving it a voice, giving it life.

This year due to obvious reasons, I have mainly worked at home. My environment has often had to be my inspiration. I work in the kitchen with a big window facing out to the back’s of other flats. This in itself is an advantage, though what I have seen are mere glimmers of people and their actions (eating, closing or opening windows, shaking clothes out before hanging them to dry), are not the most inspiring in themselves. But nonetheless, the sign of people. A reminder that I am not the only one inside. We are all connected in our little brick houses, presumably doing much of the same thing. These ideas and feelings are the basis for the poem I wrote.

The bare minimum infused with observation and introspection.

Windows

Brown considered conserved brick

the houses sit

encased and laced in  a wilderness of  trees.

windows look back at me

but all too often with no person in frame

their insides  seeming empty

hollowed insides

inside hollowed days

But then,

The sight of the neighbour sipping soup

another neighbour on a call

wearing her head-set as if staging a call

The builders working outside in the bright  yellow light

puffs of smoke as passing clouds from their lungs

the cold yellow winter

The neighbour tidying

pulling her sofa’s throw into

its nooks and narrow passages

making it tight and anew

Bed sheets twisted in thick heaves

laying in their crumpled stillness

The neighbour’s little white dog

scurrying along the green grass

like lost cotton carried by a breeze

its owner shushing it

But mostly,

it’s the growing garden before me

trees bent sideways

branches shooting upwards

long dangling branches

vines crawling over fences

leaves like confetti

A bustling garden of life and activity

against the hollowed windows

where the people live

in  flashes of existence

I wish the windows would tell me more.

But as it is,

the bereft windows

overlook the  complexity

of the growing garden.

and with a likeness

the garden possess a stillness

its activity hidden underground

the neighbouring activity amongst the  walls

Our living connectedness

between these brown considered bricks

and the wilderness of trees,

we all live,

behind our windows in our folds of only what we know.

What sits outside your window that can offer you some inspiration? t

In the name of 'bare minimum', these flowers were sketched by myself from things at home, in their usual living habitat.