Nostalgia – Page 6 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Nostalgia

Holding Up The Line

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Coffee, Harvest / September 23, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Barista, barista, if only you knew
what I'd like to order from you

Barista, barista
please, if you please
cold coffee in a Mason jar
like Momma sent to the fields
at harvest and at haying time

That much sugar
and that much cream
and no one wiped the lip
when they passed it round

Barista, barista
there's nothing I see
on that long fancy menu for me

I guess
I just came in to smell the coffee

Putting Up Preserves

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Canning, Garden, Harvest, Preserving, Survival, Vegetables / September 22, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

On the prairies thegarden is one word

While Dad and us boys are filling the bins
Mom and the girls are mustarding beans and pickling beets
filling Mason jars with a winter of good eats
then sealing them tight with red rubber rings

We are singing, it remembers like a song
A Canning time - Canning time - sing along

The Girl From Away

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Love, Teenager / September 21, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I was sixteen, it was summer

Hauling wheat to town in the 3-ton Chevy
A quart of store-bought buttermilk
on the seat for the trip back to the ranch

There was a girl, my age and beautiful
visiting in the last house on the left

Sometimes she would be
on the street or in the yard

The truck was new and powerful
I was farm boy healthy, strong

We were hitting on all cylinders

It was warm, the window was open
I was in love, the buttermilk was cold

Sky and Air

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Relationships / August 30, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In the place where you were born
like the first look
into your mother’s eyes were the skies

The size color and cut of particles of dust

Mists rising where the mists rise
and the angles of reflection and refraction

Sunrises noons and sunsets
of your youth and of your longing

You can go home again

Back to the Barn

Audio Recordings, Farm, Flight, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Birds / August 29, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Look how the swallows thread the sky - B.J. Buckley

Watching swallows swoop and loop
from the window of the loft again
would mend some tears in the years

New Hay

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Harvest / August 26, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The scent of hay
thrown upward in the cutting

Too rich and heavy to remain aloft
falls back to lie among its fallen friends

Walk shuffling small feet through it
and it lifts again in clouds to nostrils

Breathed in sweet particles remain
I do believe ... there's some there yet

The Pickup Truck

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering, Travel / tagged Dating, Driving, Friendship / August 24, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Kenny and me
in the little
blue chevy

Three
or was it four
giggly girls between us

Kenny takes his hands from the wheel
and says to the nearest one, “You drive”

She says “No”, and means it, so nobody drives

The truck going neither fast nor slow
leaves the road and heads off across the field

Until a 2-foot wall of mud settles the argument

Night Shift

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia / tagged Cars, Small Town, Youth / August 23, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

They swoop
from beneath the eaves
carving an invitation
to the big red ship

Come slip your moorings
and follow us across the sea

Playing Old 78s at the Nursing Home

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Aging, Alzheimers, Dementia, Forgetting, Memory / August 9, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Aunt Myrtle
skips a groove from time to time

The needle, still diamond sharp
plays 1952 for a round or two

Then the niceness of the people here
Grandpa's bad temper, and the size of the long kitchen at the farm

The sweetness of her husband
sometimes here and sometimes gone
and where is he now?

Reminded that he died some years ago with quick humour still intact, replies
That would explain why he never comes to visit

1 Reply

Memory Lane Jogging

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Remembering / August 6, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

There are things I remember I forgot
like the music of my father’s swearing
when a heavy hammer had hit his thumb

And like the words that mother said
when she called us all in to go to bed

There are others another layer down
that digging alone I would never f ind
that someone else has to bring to mind

So I listen to stories by family and friend
till strings pop up to pull with a knot at the end

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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