Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

Deus Occultatum

Love sparks
and cells cluster,
forming flowers and rainstorms,
people and evergreens,
calling bees
and grasshoppers
to song,
squirrels and deer,
to dance.

Love lifts the paintbrush
to the canvas, parts
the lips of the singer,
fills the page
with poem.

Love is present everywhere;
not just at all those arrivals,
all that coupling and multiplying,
as some would have you believe.

The woman opens
her mail on a Tuesday afternoon,
receives her divorce decree.
The heaviness in her chest
isn’t simple grief.

Love has landed there
in her heart, and
hope will grow
in the places Love touched.

Afghanistan, a young
soldier has a leg
and half an arm blown off
in an IED attack.

He begs to die,
but Love knows
the names of his future children,
keeps him breathing,
returns him to his fiancée.

Love stood by as three
different cancers thrived
in your father’s body,
and when it was
at last time
for him to go,
it was Love
who took his soul’s hand
and guided him home.

—Melinda Coppola

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