I don’t usually rely on prompts for my morning’s Muse.  The daily practice is usually enough of a pump-priming activity to get me started, but every once in awhile I mix my practice with Naomi Epel’s “A Tool Kit for Writers: the Observation Deck”.

 

The card with the word “squint” is tied to a prompt in the accompanying book:

 

The rolled up paper, as per the prompt, is a spyglass that acts as a visual “de-limiter”. The words I chose from the spyglass were viewed in the line of books directly in front of me. The squint created a filter which became these words:

Joy of purpose
every day
breath by breath
we practice
our lives as art,
awakening
&
making
&
noting the brassy click
of an idea unlocking:
everything
is
storyworthy.
Or hadn’t you noticed?

And this photo became the backdrop for the poem:

And the storyworthy tale behind the grape hyacinths? Many years ago when we first moved to our farm we tried to get various bulbs to naturalize. We bought a lot of bulbs from a Dutch company called VanBurgundian. They were cheap and we probably couldn’t afford them at the time, but something moved us to invest in daffodils and grape hyacinths among others. For some reason we had a lot of trouble with these bulbs and they became a standing joke and symbol of anything non-viable and wasted. We stopped buying from that company, but over the years this particular patch of grape hyacinths took off with one then two then four then…you get the progression. They naturalized, proving the truism that everything is storyworthy.

When we are gone and the woods have taken over after what is no time at all, then some couple in some distant spring will walk behind the remains of an old log house and they will have their breaths taken away by a myriad bank of grape blue flowers. One of the couple will turn to the other and ask, “I wonder what’s the story here?” To which the response might be, “No idea.”
But as I say in the poem, “Everything is storyworthy.” The picture tells the story all by itself. What I have related is just the backstory. The real story, I think, is a simpler one, one that declares an act of faith taken through marriage and promise. It is as sure a wedding troth as a wedding band.

If the future couple have any imagination worth its salt they will figure it out. It is an analog truth far outlasting any digital record and it is told in a format anyone can understand as long as the grape hyacinths bloom in March. It is told with cobalt blue and forest green.