Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

A Prayer, Fertile

For all the beginnings
we cultivate from seeds,
lay to cradle in the richest earth,
give moisture with our tears,
our sweat and
handfuls of rainwater
like offerings to the deities
we name Hope,
or Light, or Fire of Creation,

I fall from standing
into some posture
that might be praise.

I kneel sinking
into seasoned earth,
fold my face
into the minerals,
offer my nose as home
for decayed corpses of beetles
and trees, musk
of the short lived creatures,
the remains of wildfires,

ashes of loves that didn’t last,
marriages that turned
their flowering heads away
from sun and plunged
broken stemmed
into that great brown blanket
to which all things return,
sacrificing their seeded
and petaled orbs
to the wombs of future loves,

making one with the source
of creation and destruction,
opening my mouth at last
to welcome fertile earth
and all I shielded myself
from and against,

and out come muffled songs
of dying love, their
notes traveling deep into the earth
and echoing back
as push for infant seeds
now traveling
up and up
towards the surface,
towards the light.

 

–Melinda Coppola

 

 

 

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