Nostalgia – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Nostalgia

The Silence of Sleighs

Audio Recordings, Environment, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering, Travel / January 8, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My earliest memories do not have a sound track

The steppes of Canada are the steppes of Russia
Zhivago watching Lara leave ... without her song

The horse’s hooves
compressing snow to greater silence
the runners sinking softly into silence
skimming surface of silence
stretching out the notes of silence

The bells on the horse . . . . . . were there bells

Watched Dr. Zhivago last night with family

The Innocence of Snow

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Nature, News, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / January 2, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Winter
was winter
and all the world

When the only light was lamp
and the only power God
and the innocence of snow
lay soft on lad and land

When floating breath of kin and kine
was pure and white as well
and mankind too as far as we could tell

Antennae daily now
break down that door with news of war

Winter on the ranch
Kin = Family & Kine = Cattle

Christmas Cards

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering, Travel / December 24, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Back when mail was mail
and jam came in a pail
(with strawberries big as your thumb)
the thing I most remember
are the envelopes of December

It didn't surprise us
that Santa came by sleigh
anybody to get to our ranch
would have had to come by sleigh

so they came by card instead
and helped us light each clip-on candle
around the popcorned tree

Tastes of Childhood

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Remembering / tagged Christmas, Holiday, memories / December 15, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When I was two or three
and my mother read to me

When Alice fell down the rabbit hole
I fell down the rabbit hole
tumbling over and over in the air
the memory is still there

Ribbon candy and real candles on the tree

Christmas chocolates made at home
from a factory recipe someone
slipped to someone on a train

Taste buds still budding
tasting with my whole body

Slowly I've forgotten how
only love and fear can do it now

Wishbone Wish

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / October 11, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I blow out the candles
and wish for a wishbone
dry as day after thanksgiving

Me and my big sister
pulling on the brittle arms
across the old ranch table

so many candles ago
that neither remembers
who got the bigger half

Lifebuoy

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia / October 4, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I never have learned to swear very well
which just goes to show that training will tell

That there is much to be said for good homes
and payoffs for stern discipline and hope

It's not that I don't know the words
but they all still taste like soap

Buffalo Chips

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Manure, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Childhood, Play / October 3, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Lily pads floating
on the sea of prairie grass

Heat for the tepees
or the homesteader's cabin

Nothing wasted in the West

And every boy knew
that a good sharp stick or a pointy-toed shoe
would let you know
if one was just right, or still a little too new

And I'm here to tell you, that compared to a good dry chip
meeting a West wind's invitation
a Frisbee is a weak and poor, plastic imitation

Memory Lanes

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia / tagged Memory, Work / September 27, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

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 I 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

Highway 2 from Moose Jaw to Mossbank
Photo by author, September 2022

Marilyn in the Mountains

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia, Travel / tagged Jasper, Marilyn Monroe / September 7, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sixty years after
the release of the film
returning again to
The River of No Return

Stepping again in a river
that you can't step in twice
sleeping again in a cabin
by the cabin where you slept

Listening again to the rapids
that run over the same rocks
and still chew at the roots
of the same bent tree

Listening for the whispers of the words
you went away without saying
the words we are all still waiting to hear

1 Reply

The Berries

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / September 5, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

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