Nostalgia – Page 15 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Nostalgia

The Turkey Shoot

Farm, Nostalgia, Personal Growth, Ranch Life / November 26, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Small town Saskatchewan
raising money for the curling rink
Targets fifty feet away
and old bent-sight 22’s to shoot
The trick to bringing a turkey home
was not how well at the bullseye shot
but how fast you learned that life
is sometimes
three inches down
and two to the left of where you aim

Storm Windows on the Prairie

Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Fall, Winter / November 25, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Put them up too early
and all the air you get till spring
is three small holes under the wing

and that hot stove hopping
for the threshing crew
will have them cooking like the stew

Put them up too late
and an early blizzard dumping deep
freezes us all in our sleep

The Innocence of Snow

Family, Nostalgia, Remembering / November 24, 2019 / 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

Arrows Away

Farm, Nostalgia, Pilots, Ranch Life, Travel / November 7, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

There is an arrow launcher you can make
with small town prairie scrap and scrape

A stick and a string and a shingle old or new

Shingles run from thick to thin
thick for the nose and thin for the fin

Notch it at the finger balance point
and it will fly farther than your slingshot flings
or paper airplane wings

We didn’t get this far west
without an urge for distance and flight

Mud

Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Kids / October 17, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

there aint nothing like mud for misery and fun for curse deep wheel to the axle and rivers with sticks and squish between the toes and fallen on top of the one that just fell and pants stiff to cracking before you're half way home grown ups are no fun

Pie

Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Baking, Family Traditions / October 14, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

It ain’t the pie
it’s that Momma made it

Lemon with mountain meringue

Deep apple - with a slice of cheese
(or else it’s the kiss without the squeeze)

Blueberry, saskatoon or cherry
the berry can vary the taste’s the same

Wood-fired memory of the ranch again

Enjoying leftover pie for breakfast today – Remnants of our Canadian Thanksgiving feast.

Mom, Happy Birthday

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Love, Mother / October 3, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Oh we would circle
rattling tin-wheeled trucks and trikes
and drive her crying to her bed

Gather soot enough from here and there
to keep her forever scrubbing
at our souls and skins

And worry her near to death
while she stayed up to worry us alive
from many a snow and beer-filled drive

I know she does it to this day
and I’m afraid anything else I’d say
would all be mush and love
and angels watching from above
and yet still, I think I will

Thinking of my Mom today, on what would have been her 102nd birthday.

Gopher Tails

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / September 27, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When I was seven
gopher tails were three cents

The county had a bounty
to arrest the little pest
not exactly a price on their heads
but you get the picture

So we hauled buckets of water
to drown them out
Learned from the bigger boys
how to tie a noose in binder twine
Placed it around the hole
and waited

Curiosity
which has been known to kill cats
is not very good for gophers either

Once caught
they were run in mad races
spun to centrifugal asphyxiation
or finished off in other cruel ways
before yielding us our hard-earned bounty

In the spring we watched their return
to the snow-speckled pasture
running tumbling wrestling
making love

And the wonderful babies
when they first ventured out
to try sunshine, grass and shaky legs

It amazes me now
that as boys we could take
such joy in their playful beauty

and in their deaths

2 Replies

Grandpa’s Upstairs Porch

Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / September 26, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The only scenery was sky
the only light was lightning

Five of us sibled summer nights
blanketed against the cooling air

Watching storms from forever away
til they rained us to our beds

1 Reply

Why the Collectors Aren’t Collecting my Comic Book Collection

Nostalgia / tagged Childhood, Siblings / September 25, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Peanut butter
bacon, candy and mud

Roll em up fold em up
lug them everywhere love

and brothers

1 Reply

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Sandi Hebley on How Fallen AngelsAugust 17, 2025
Indeed!
Nancy Fierstien on Unremember ThatAugust 16, 2025
Gonna be inclined to share this one at my Poets' Tea reading tomorrow afternoon. Thanks, Neil!
Sandi Hebley on Memory Lane JoggingAugust 5, 2025
Lovely!
Sandi Hebley on Dad and Death at WarAugust 4, 2025
😢
Sandi Hebley on One for the AuntiesAugust 3, 2025
Wow!

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