Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

A 2022 Story

  There was a little stream—more of a rivulet, really—that dribbled and dripped and murmured along through a swath of untamed land.  Many moons and suns cast their light upon her waters as she found her way around boulders and hills and the wide trunks of venerable trees. She was free of any precepts that […]

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 prairie, new moon sliver in […]

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 and chairs, small nose searching […]

Sixty Unplugged Minutes with my Love

I used a text to carve an island from a Thursday in two overloaded lives. I typed 10 to 11 Walk with me. Moose Hill. I meant Come. To the refuge down the road, the one where boardwalks hover over murky waters in which juicy clusters of grape-like frog eggs expand in the quiescent womb […]

All This Joy, All This Sorrow

Monday, March 28, morning. It’s snowing as I write this.  Big, fluffy flakes that arrive past the date of our northern hemisphere Spring equinox.  I wonder if they know they won’t accumulate. If they did know, would their especially short lifespan would matter to them?  I suspect not.  Nature cycles despite our self-important desires and […]

Collateral Sorrow

It’s been a time of times, a steady landslide of uncertainties. Yes, the Covid, the shutdown. Yes, Bink and so many other adults with disabilities being home all day every day for many weeks, with all the usual programs and activities canceled. Yes, the mass suffering and loss that has accompanied this pandemic around the […]

FISHING

Perched on the frost hardened bank of the wide, cold river, eyes intent on the rushing water, dark and high, I notice the greenish brown river grasses, rooted hopefully in their muddy beds, in a permanent lean as the current pulls them forward, and my eyes train between the reeds, strain towards that bottom where […]

HOME

The past few days I’ve had home humming in my head and heart. Not my physical dwelling, but rather the whole concept of it: home. It’s a loaded word, to say the least. But I rarely say the least… at least not with pen to paper. Recently, Super Guy and I visited an animal sanctuary. […]