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

Night Upon the Prairie

My poem, Night Upon the Prairie, was published in Writing in a Woman’s Voice poetry journal yesterday. While writing this I channeled singer/songwriter energies. If I had learned to play guitar, I think this one would have morphed into a folk or country song.   It was night upon the

Read More »

The Life Cycle of a Day

Bink and I walk outside a lot. We are blessed with a number of parks and nature sanctuaries in our area, and we know some of them quite well. This poem stemmed from a particular ramble early last spring. I’m pleased that Willows Wept Review chose to publish it in

Read More »

Why Poetry Matters

I’m so pleased to share that my poem “Nobody” was published in Thimble Literary Journal today. You can read it by clicking on this link: https://www.thimblelitmag.com/2022/08/09/nobody/ My writing process is anything but logical. Sometimes it feels as if the poems begin as embryos planted in the unseen folds of my

Read More »

BE EVER SO KIND

In my nearly 30 year journey parenting my child with special needs, I’ve had much time to reflect on the juxtaposition between How I Thought Things Would Go and How Things Have Gone. How Things Are.  I revisit memories of child-me, teen-me, very-young-adult me, and wonder—what if she knew how

Read More »

The Visitor

  In the dark, a baby fox hoists her short legs one by trembling one up the steep stairs, tripping the sensor light as she reaches the back deck in a sharp-eyed heap of gray brown fur. She toddles, adorably unsteady, across the width of composite boards, circles metal table

Read More »

Slack Satori

satori \ sə-ˈtȯr-ē n (Buddhism) Zen Buddhism the state of sudden indescribable intuitive enlightenment  [from Japanese]• Hmmm. Tell a creative (poet, artist, musician, sculptor) that something is indescribable, and chances are they will receive your words as a delightful challenge! I’m happy to share that my poem, Slack Satori, was

Read More »

The Color of Swans

Hello out there! The blog has been quiet this summer, but I’ve been editing and submitting work to a wide range of literary journals. My submissions practice has been haphazard and sporadic over the past ten years. I made a commitment to send out a lot more work this year.

Read More »

A Little Bullish

I know, I know. Much is not right here in the world. We conjure and raise up hatreds and fears born of misconceptions. We bow down to profit and convention instead of the goodness in each other. We make wars, first with ourselves, and then with those we call other.

Read More »

She Runs On

She Runs On and On, and On   A whole lot of nothing happening here in the Department of Creation of New Poems, and so I sat down with DETERMINATION and began to write, the way I used to write before I knew what “good” writing was and before I

Read More »