Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

Melinda Coppola

twenty four may | from the inside out

What’s in a name? More pub cred, musings

Mid-April already?  Time is such a liquid concept. Today, my  already may be your finally. It is already April?  Finally, it is spring.  In February, my finally was louder than my already. Finally, Winter has lifted the frayed ends of her long gray coat and begun her drawn-out egress. I’ve had two more poems published, […]

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 […]

A Little Flower

“I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn’t much improved my opinion of them.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince Hello, First, here’s a sweet daffodil that blossomed outside my door yesterday. A little yellow beacon of hope. It’s been quiet here on […]

Integration

It has been almost a month since my mother passed. It wasn’t unexpected. She was old and ill and tired. She wanted to go, was impatient with the way those final months seemed to drag and throw more miseries her way. I was able to mark 60 of my birthdays with her still in the […]

Conversations with a Ghost

A Dead Friend Speaks Almost a year into my exit from flesh, what we call, when embodied, death, You talk to me, wonder if I help when you struggle and worry, soothe when you rage and grieve. You ask if I’ve retained shape and color, if my long and wild hair, blonde with streaks of […]

Look up! The world is out there.

Reckoning Inside, just shy of sunrise, all over the land people awakened, reached for their small screens, hungry for the tiny words and pictures, memes and videos designed to amuse, entrance, distract from stress and angst of bad news streaming 24/7. The people found ways to laugh, or groan, and see themselves in the scowls […]

Medicament

Medicament This morning’s waking, tight and tender to the touch, felt like neck ache, and all along the spine of this day my heart climbed and slid, ridge-riding the grief and uncertainty of these past months, pushing up towards bone-like pinnacles, vertebraic protrusions of more bad news— illness and violence, economic cancer, people hating their […]

Time, Place, Classroom

WHEN The world gets so noisy. Too many voices straining, pushing past their natural limits to be heard. Our small ears can’t discern provenance or factuality. Reactions quicken, turning knee-jerk, protective. WHERE There is the place where trees thicken into extended families, root systems entwined beneath the earth. Look for the leafy canopy that forms […]

When all this is over…

WHEN THIS IS OVER Bring bread, chewy and warm, wrapped in that red checkered tablecloth that always sings picnic, which is short for happy family, easy friendships, peace and plenty in our town state country planet. We never went on one, a picnic, not once in all our together years even though we had that […]

Prospecting for Grace

Praise The faithful sun, generously stirring energies of Earth and atmosphere, coaxing every green thing towards the rising song of spring. Parents walking with their children outside, smiling and laughing, nodding at neighbors out washing their cars. Quieted streets yielding their usual ruthless noise to melodious birdsong, squirrels rustling in the brush, the wind whistling […]