"What is green in me darkens, muscadine."

May you draw strength from a color today. May you hold burdens lightly, like a flower or a fruiting body. May you feel yourself as one among many who are like-minded, determined to keep this world well.

Korsdalen, Hammer Hills by Niels Larsen Stevns, Public Domain

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Stepping Westward

by Denise Levertov

What is green in me
darkens, muscadine.
If woman is inconstant,
good, I am faithful to
ebb and flow, I fall
in season and now
is a time of ripening.
If her part
is to be true,
a north star,
good, I hold steady
in the black sky
and vanish by day,
yet burn there
in blue or above
quilts of cloud.
There is no savor
more sweet, more salt
than to be glad to be
what, woman,
and who, myself,
I am, a shadow
that grows longer as the sun
moves, drawn out
on a thread of wonder.
If I bear burdens
they begin to be remembered
as gifts, goods, a basket
of bread that hurts
my shoulders but closes me
in fragrance. I can
eat as I go.

from The Collected Poems of Denise Levertov, ed. Paul A. Lacy, introduced by Eavan Boland (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2024)

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Your Invitations

1

I have always loved this description of burdens: “…gifts, / goods, a basket / of bread that hurts / my shoulders but closes me / in fragrance.” What is the fragrance of your burdens? Write it, draw it, or sit and savor the scent of it.

2

Levertov describes maturing as a process of vivid color changes in herself, and changes in the sky. Muscadines, Vitis rotundifolia, are a grapevine species native to the Southern U.S. The muscadine fruit can be dark purple, bronze, even almost black. What color change is going on in your life now? Wear an item of clothing that reminds you of this.

3

They say a Southern woman’s life is complete when she has a magnolia tree, a pecan tree, a fig tree, and a muscadine vine.

P.S.

The muscadine vine is home to two species of moths:

Amphion floridensis, the Nessus sphinx,

Mournful Sphinx Moth, or Enyo lugubris