Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Climbout Sunsets

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Relationships, Travel / tagged Aging, Michelangelo, Supersonic Flight / July 14, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

John Gillespie Magee
slipped the surly bonds of earth
reached out and touched the face of God

Planes are bigger and faster now
I in my Aero Commander
commander of the air

Climbing at dusk have set the sun
on the lip of the world
and held it there

Have rode the Concorde
faster than the speed of sound
and faster than the earth goes round
that can lift it up where it went down

And there are times I'd best the lark
to try to hold or yet turn back
baby's smiles and love's first spark

I think Magee, the reverence would see
as we all fight the dying of the light
and try to touch the Sistine finger
a little longer before night

Wouldn’t It Be Nice

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots / tagged Joy, Wonder / July 13, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Wouldn't it be nice
if you went out with your instructor one morning
and the blue foothills sky was full of white puff ball clouds

And you smiled at each other
and began to play in and out of their magic
of shadows and light

And it felt much as lighter than air
as air is lighter than earth

And the hour took moments and forever
and the silence and awe followed you back
and he wouldn't even take your money for the ride

Now I know it's not legal to fly in clouds like that
so I'm not exactly saying that it happened
but wouldn't it be nice

How to Hook a Guy to Fly

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots / July 12, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Buy him a ride with a barnstormer before he's ten
and see how big he grows as the town grows small

Put First Flight $5.00 in a magazine ad in Hawaii
Let the pilot do the take off and hand over the controls
Let him fly Waikiki beach to Diamond Head and back

The Barnstormer and the Boy

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged escape, Growing up / July 11, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In the little plane, just the pilot and me
up up up into the prairie air

Climbing and gliding and floating free
high above the county fair

The town looked small from way up there but hell... it looked small from anywhere

It was the changing people into ants
that I loved best and wanted again

Being on the wrong side of relative bigness had been causing me a lot of pain

The Day I Saw the UFO

Audio Recordings, Farm, Flight, Ranch Life / July 10, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I'm sitting
with my back against the tractor tire
eating lunch in the long field by the lake

It flies over
directly south to north
plenty high and far from humanly fast

It is made of a metal that shines out of itself

I rise with a smile
brush the crumbs from my jeans
set my eyes on the furrow
and let out the clutch

Roundup

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Branding, Work / July 9, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

It's about the hardest dustiest best work a man can get

The pride of the heeling rope, thrown snake quick fro a good horse and the slow steady pull, dragging the white face out where the boys with the hot irons can record the feat

Three hundred cows sing of calves lost and found, and above and through it all the full strong laugh of one of the boys where a slip was made or a kick well placed

At the end of the day, you wrap a rope sore hand around a spring cold beer, and lean back against the old pole fence deep in the pain, and the sweat, and the moment

Completely released from the wheel of desire
There's no place you'd rather be
There's no one you'd rather be with
and you're too damned tired to move anyway

Kenny and Me (or Ranching at Eighteen)

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / July 8, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Together we were young
and strong and very bold
and together we could drink
more beer than we could hold

We could drive home late and fast
singing every Johnny Horton song
Then fall asleep for minutes
and still answer the morning gong

We would work it out in the hot hot sun
(so easy then did the poisons yield)
As we sweated bales with pitch forks
and passed gas
in a thousand acre field

When your best friend is your cousin
The missing is mightily multiplied
RIP Kenny Wirges

Saskatchewan from the Skies

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Pilots, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Perspective, River / July 7, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Man lays down grids
while nature smiles in wander

This is hard to see from a tractor
but your neighbour Wally has a plane

It won't look the same below again

Absent Mind

Audio Recordings / tagged Distraction / July 6, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Happy Birthday USA

Audio Recordings / tagged 4th of July, Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Democracy, Hope, Independence Day / July 4, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Declaration of pure poetry
Long may that song be sung

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Sandi Hebley on Ready for WinterOctober 26, 2026
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NEIL MEILI on Laughing With the DeadOctober 25, 2026
Thanks for the story Sandi, And bet he is and that I would have liked him Neil
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Sandi Hebley on Laughing With the DeadOctober 21, 2026
One of my fondest memories is that the last full sentence my dad spoke was to tell a visitor a…
Sandi Hebley on BeemersOctober 18, 2026
Ha!!!

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