Author Archives: neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

A MARY OLIVER QUESTION

Nature, Poems about Poetry / / by

A MARY OLIVER QUESTION
You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don’t want to tell it.
Mary Oliver – DOGFISH

Mary Oliver writes poems that are not about her

In the poems there are
black bears and wild geese
and dogfish and starfish and sharks
and even a few clams

There are herons and owls
red-tailed hawks, black snakes
and fawns and does and dogs

The black bears and wild geese
the alligators and the sunflowers
and even the cracked walls say

“These poems are not about us either”

I have to ask. Are they about you?

A RIFF ON INVICTUS

Haiku, Poems about Poetry / tagged , , / / by

A RIFF ON INVICTUS

A great poem
and a wonderful title
they may use it
in a Mandela movie someday

My reverence however
does not prevent further musings
like what it would be like as haiku

Black as night god
bludgeonings of chance
bloody but unbowed

Or note in the human condition
the deepest silent plea
to those we love

That no matter
the many thousand ways
we have failed to pay the rent

they will continue
to invict and not evict us

TABBY LA ROSA

Uncategorized / tagged , / / by

TABBY LA ROSA

Horses are cats
they just want to be
petted and loved

Although
when you neglect to do so
they are much more likely
to send you flying
than piss on your best Persian rug

That sort of thing is reserved for cats
and cats are not horses
and deeply resent
being ridden

as every toddling two year old
in history (unable to read history)
will have to have etched
on the blank slates of their skin

DREAMS

Uncategorized / tagged / / by

DREAMS

Digging out once again
from dreaming I’m
dreaming I’m
dreaming

where I tread pasts
and foretell futures
embrace taboo embraces
am chased and chase
in many a circled chase

Buildings never built
I construct and walk among
and chat with father
mother and Carl Jung

New music I compose
on a Strad I heard
in concert only once
understand and speak
Spanish, French and Greek

Write direct and act the parts
in full length movies
almost every night

If you think that
in the morning I’d be tired
you’d be right

THE STROKE

Relationships / tagged , , , , / / by

THE STROKE

I lost my father
when he was sixty one

He wasn’t exactly lost
I knew where he was
but he didn’t

Six weeks in a coma
some parts he sent ahead
and some came back

The great Swiss-German
precision driven
driven precision
mind stopped ticking

True the right artistic side
the one he’d put away
the one that mostly died
when his mother died
at eight came out to play

Whatever we hadn’t resolved
and there was plenty
stayed that way

but art is no small
thing either

TEN GENERATIONS OF BUTTERFLIES

Environment, Nature, Relationships, Travel / tagged , , , , / / by

TEN GENERATIONS OF BUTTERFLIES
or BACK TO THE GARDEN

It is mid November
and there are Monarchs
everywhere
at our new Texas home

It takes five generations
each way for them to get
from Mexico to Canada
and back

(Stan said so, and he
would know)

About sixty years ago
we lived for a year or two
at my grandfather’s farm

He had a garden
A Canadian national treasure
(The newspapers all said so)

Ten thousand trees planted
on the bald-assed prairie
rich with fruit and flowers
no one else would even test
that far north and west

I watch generation nine or ten
lightly and unerringly
almost home again

and feel his DNA
happily spinning
in every cell