SPRING IN SASKATCHEWAN
In the city
retired farmers still watch the weather
In greening front yards
wooden ducks nailed to white posts
wings spinning backward
Author Archives: neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com
DEPARTMENT STORE BLUES
DEPARTMENT STORE BLUES
I run the long gauntlet of perfume counter aisles
Reaching men’s wear I dare
my first breath
since leaving the street
Take my time picking up
and fondly fondling
warm winter socks
Should I buy two pair or three
two browns and a black
or two blacks and a brown
In no hurry to begin the return journey
so recently reminded of why
I had been driven here
in the first place
The odor of the old pair
I’M READY FOR MY NEW HIP NOW
I’M READY FOR MY NEW HIP NOW
I think I have finally forgiven
My old hip for all those years of pain
My mother for her hesitation
to carry me in a time of war
My father for the crushings
between the baler and the shed
and between his will and mine
And have taken also
the first small steps toward gratitude
for how far all three have carried me
THE LADY WITH SIX FINGERS
THE LADY WITH SIX FINGERS
Old, black, and sweet as lasses
little house on the side of a hill
in the red dirt of East Texas
Someone in the kitchen was Dinah
best pies and anything that fries
Special in a million ways
but that extra finger on each hand
she sure was proud of that
Don’t think she’d have traded Liz
for five carats on her third
THE AUSTRIAN UNCLES
THE AUSTRIAN UNCLES
Already old when I was young
revered as I would hope to be when old
Two brothers married to
two sisters of my father’s father
Great aunts
always as they’ve always been
busily bustling round the house
while the uncles somehow stay
both present and out of the way
Little china cups in work-hard hands
black coffee and home-brew
sipping the day away
TIME IN TEXAS
TIME IN TEXAS
You race it in Dallas
drown it in Houston
and dance with it in Austin
Any farther South
and you have to wrap
it around a siesta
a burrito with salsa at both ends
STEPS IN TIME
STEPS IN TIME
Just outside of Zurich I walk
through the childhood home
of my father’s father
Look out across
the still green valley
visit the mountain fresh
swimming hole where
his teeth once chattered
A hundred years seems
as nothing here
as rain runs down the stones
carved with the family name
The church and yard
where they are buried
nears five hundred
and it itself was built
on the ruins of a castle
An hour and a half west of London
we visit the farm where my
mother’s mother played as a child
look out across unchanged fields
to a chalk horse cut into the cliffs
who has not taken a single step
since she left
Sunsets
Sunsets are long in these latitudes
and filled with color
The color of sunlight refracting
through soil and seed and dreams
picked up by west winds
and held in suspension
along with prayers
for a good harvest
What it might pay off
and what it might pay
a little something
down on
A little rain brings them
back to earth again
JAP ORANGES
JAP ORANGES
Nothing racist in that term
for my sisters or me
Nothing but affection
gratitude and endearment
as we picture in our minds
little Geisha girls
at a giant Bonsai tree
picking and packing
The only vitamin C we’d see
Wooden boxes always
handy for something
and each orange wrapper
was luxury in the outdoor loo
The Charmin of farmin’
after spending most of our years
tearing pages out of Sears
CHINESE RESTAURANT
CHINESE RESTAURANT
Sorry John Donne
but some men may be islands
or castaways
in small prairie towns
fifty miles by bad road
from any other of their race
Tall walled booths along one side
twisted-wire chairs and tables too
my father and his friends had coffee
I think mine was cream soda
We may have eaten there
but I don’t remember
certainly at five or six
I would not have imagined
that we were as strange to him
as he was to us
All I ever knew
of the inner man
was the pungent foreignness
of the old two-holer out back
Fast forward six years or so
to small town of Mossbank
on the South side of the lake
A chubby twelve year old
sits in a low walled booth
with his best buddies
and another Chinese man
in another Chinese café
serves up vanilla cokes
(when vanilla still had alcohol)
and marks our tabs with Chinese signs
I asked him what my three mean
Big – Small – Happy