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My home is host
to little altars everywhere

honoring lives lived,
seasons arriving and leaving,

the hundred sparks of grace
and wonder, sorrow
and understanding

that pock and foliate
hours and years squeezed
into the dance of this body,

my particular, grand,
unbearably blessed
and gratefully transient
human experience.

On good days
I go bowing through the hours
stretched wide,
humbled by everything.

There are others, though—
minutes, whole
starless nights, mute weeks—
when these dry hands go numb
holding thin skin
tight to my bones

to keep the hope
from draining out
the holes
all the leaving
has left.

–Melinda Coppola

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