Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

About My Blog

I started this blog to quiet the voices in my head and heart that have been whispering and cajoling and sometimes yelling at me to write more.

This is a space where all the parts of me—mother, poet, wife, lover of beach stones and furry creatures and frequent toe-dipper in the river of song, Yoga practitioner, and teacher and she-who-cooks and she-who-makes-art and she-who-loves-silence, where all the parts of me can come out to play.

I started this blog to keep myself engaged in dialogue with my soul. If what I write interests you, educates you, moves you, …well, that’s a beautiful bonus.

Most Recent Blog Post

Farther

I’m so pleased that my poem, “Farther”, which I share with you below, was just published in the Spring 2024 issue of Metonym Literary Journal. Metonym is a print journal, available for sale through their site at https://metonym-journal.com/

Poetry is art. While not everything written in all poems actually happened the way it reads, it’s all and always true. This poem, though, is a snapshot in time and drawn from clear memories of my late father in the long-ago years of my teenhood. I wrote it from a place of deep compassion for him. I hope that comes through.

 

Farther

 

I knew where to find you
when the big house was quiet,
the powdered air
thick with Viceroy smoke
parting just long enough
to pull me in, and the couch—
your bed of choice since she left—
was empty.

Out the back sliders I’d go,
onto the patio you built,
down the quick wooded path
behind the home
you’d labored to design,
land cleared by your own hands
and the grudging help of your two sons.

My eyes would scan the field
for your red flannel shirt,
tell-tale column of smoke
twirling skywards
from the butt you gripped
between your thin lips,
frayed tan hat tilted towards
the ground you so loved.

March to November,
early mornings, after dinner,
all day Saturdays and Sundays,
any time you could steal
from the desk job you despised,

your dry spine hunched closer to the earth
as you kneeled among the rows—
tendrils of fuzzy stemmed beans
wrapping the stalks of corn,
cucumbers crawling the ground
over and under the vining ones;
pumpkin, green and orange squashes.

The gardens thrived
as your marriage faltered—
wife gone wayward, stolen
by some untamed expansion of consciousness
outside the lines of your understanding.

You poured your sweat and silent grief
into the dark earth that later clung
beneath your nails, settled into the lines
etched across your broad forehead.

Gardens framed by bright
pest-repelling marigolds
blossomed under your aching hands
as you weeded out broad-leafed intruders
striving for order in a landscape
that defied the rules
you built your life on—

Do things the right way.
Do not abide nonsense.
Stay within the lines.

What must you have thought about
all those long outside hours
alone, temporal,
coaxing bounty from the ground
outside the too-large house,
children grown away,

your work-worn hands
digging for answers
and bringing up only worms?

 

–Melinda Coppola

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read More Blog Posts

Farther

I’m so pleased that my poem, “Farther”, which I share with you below, was just published in the Spring 2024 issue of Metonym Literary Journal. Metonym is a print journal, available for sale through their site at https://metonym-journal.com/ Poetry is art. While not everything written in all poems actually happened

Read More »

In the Pink

“Fruits on Pink” by Bink She begins. First, there is pink. Well…vivid electric magenta is more apt.  She pushes the frayed brush into the water jar, hitting the  bottom too hard. Taps out a neurodivergent rhythm on the canvas. Some would call it background. To her, I think, it is

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A Tale of Two Motorists

Poem for the Pissed-Off Driver   I have a third eye that sees beyond your scowl, man-behind -the-wheel who couldn’t bear to wait when I slowed to turn right and so zoomed past, horn blaring, finding just enough time to turn and glare at me, mouth a “F*** you” before

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Still, After Years

This is the Love Poem, Mid-Life for Super Guy “Who, being loved, is poor?” –Oscar Wilde Remember the night I woke moaning, ankles on fire, some ghost gripping my arches, preventing even a twitch of toes, a wiggle’s wriggle? You rolled without hesitation from the warmth of our layered nest,

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The Continuing Saga of Little Stream

A 2022 Story Part 11 You can read part 10 here: https://www.melindacoppola.com/little-stream-an…22-story-part-10   Part 11 “Lily Pond?” Little Stream called out again and again without answer into the bright air. Her voice was thin and tired, and it seemed to blow away in the wind. The long, odd journey she’d

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Old into New

The Boathouses, Acrylic on canvas by Melinda Coppola   Natura Illustratio   Nature is a picture book of wisdom and example, an illustrated guide to how we could arrive, and live, and die. Take, for example, a leaf in spring. It draws from mother tree the energy it needs and

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A Hole That Can’t Be Filled

Can you imagine being in such tremendous pain that the best path to freedom seems to be ending your life?  Feeling so hopeless or worthless that you truly believe the world would be better off without you?  We hear from family and community members and friends left shattered, wondering if

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Little Stream and Wee Lily Pond ( A 2022 story, part 10)

A 2022 Story You can read part 9  here: https://www.melindacoppola.com/a-2022-story-part-9/   Part 10 It was dark, so very dark.  Moonless and sunless.   In a tunnel of deafening noise Little Stream’s watery body rolled and pitched and  lifted  to one side and then the other.  Was she right side up

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