REINCARNATION BY LOON
Now there’s a sound
you could take anywhere
and remember when you returned
Author Archives: neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
REINCARNATION BY CLOUD
REINCARNATION BY CLOUD
Does the rain falling on us now
remember the palmed oasis
the emerald lake of the Rockies
the laughing over small stones
Hand in hand we stand
faces upward, wet with hope
SITTING BY THE POOL IN HOUSTON
SITTING BY THE POOL IN HOUSTON
Today I didn’t go jogging
or send a check to any needy cause
do anything much to my teeth or hair
that the product sellers said I should
or any of the million things
I’m told I need to do to be a better me
There is a man
In the high mountains of India
who sits beside a waterfall all day
and says to God
Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful
good work, good work, good work
I had a few moments of that
HOW MANY PINS ON THE HEAD OF AN ANGEL
HOW MANY PINS ON THE HEAD OF AN ANGEL
Twenty after midnight and up alone
sharing every Christmas past
with the angel of Austin present
alight on the well lit tree
Telling her of the first thin pine
strung with popcorn and candles clipped
back on the ranch before the power
Every crackle of every log
every crinkle of tissue torn
every child’s first Christmas
and every parent’s last
and every cousin and uncle and aunt
no longer as they say extant
Praying her to spread
her wings and wonder wide
that we may gather them all by dawn
SWEET MEMORIES
SWEET MEMORIES
My mother’s mother
lost a leg in the sugar wars
We dragged our butts across town to see her
she dragged hers across the house to serve us
You would think that each visit
might have served as a caution
But, as young minds
may twist and stay twisted
I took away instead
an infinite ability to ignore the obvious
and a taste for milk and ginger cookies
MEMORY LANES
MEMORY LANES
Once again in summer
where prairie blacktop ribbons
over Saskatchewan’s slow rolling hills
past grazing cow and half grown grain
driving on the road I helped to build
back when I was eighteen teen
five hundred years and yesterday ago
hauling asphalt to the spreader
in a truck hot dirty and mean
and eating steak for breakfast
with men of tar and grit
Still with a smile
each time we pass
a road crew at their work
The odor, odious
to you and almost all,
as sweet to me as youth
and lilac in the wind
AGING GRACEFULLY
AGING GRACEFULLY
We have decided that
we aren’t oldsheimery at all
but absent minded professors
far too caught up on Newtonian
and Russelian physics,
and epigenetic
and brain scan implications in
the present presidential race
to remember to put
the butter back in the fridge
TASTE
TASTE
The taste buds
of the young we are told
are more sensitive
than those of the old
While there is still pleasure
in a snowflake on the tongue
it is more difficult to tell of late
if they have six feet or eight
PRAYERS
PRAYERS
The frogs out back
are singing in the rain
Not like Gene Kelly
in the actual raining now
More like the brave
in Remington’s painting
standing alone on a hill
skull raised above his head
trying to conjure back the buffalo
Last week it worked for the frogs
BACKYARD AUSTIN
BACKYARD AUSTIN
Limestone rings the pool
koi swim in an ancient sea