Pilots – Page 2 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Pilots

Flying the Concorde

Audio Recordings, Pilots, Travel / December 21, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I am not immune to the desire
to wind the stem of old time back
and with about as much success as most

Except when the Concorde flew the sky
and I, pilot to pilot in the cockpit stood
and watched the earth reverse for me
on a flight from London to DC

What have I done you ask
with the slice of time I stole

Saved it in a bank of cloud
above the ocean eight miles up
where I can go if ever I wish
to write a check for a smile or a kiss

Word Divisions

Audio Recordings, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Communication, Understanding / June 25, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You can know your native language
and still feel all alone
as pilots talk to pilots
in a code that’s all their own

Yet not even one to one
can they share that love of air
or touch the other’s feelings
of the fear and beauty there

Sailors talk to sailors
of wind and sail and rope
of nights upon the ocean
of courage and of hope

Yet the words just can’t convey
their love of sea and air
nor touch the other’s feelings
of the fear and beauty there

And though cowboys talk to cowboys
in a special kind of drawl
there’s still a space between them
the words can’t tell at all

Not those nights of cold and stars
with coyotes on the air
nor the call of open spaces
with the fear and beauty there

Watch as lovers talk to lovers
in ways only two can share
as they build between them
a framework light and fair

While a web that’s spun of maybes
hangs so fragile in the air
that one false word can shatter
into pain, the beauty there

And yet

There are still some crazy poets
out riding hatless in the sun
still trying to do the very thing
we all know can’t be done

Still Quixoting for a language
that can speak to everyone

1 Reply

Charlie Golf Xray November Golf

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Travel / tagged Airplane, Maule, Plane / August 27, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

STOL stands for
Short Take Off and Landing

Get off the ground
In a hundred and fifty feet
stick a landing in about the same

Looking for a metaphor

Author’s Maule M5-235 Calgary, AB Canada

November 7858 Golf

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Relationships, Travel / tagged Airplane, Cessna, Plane / August 26, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You never forget your first

Beauty is nice, and grace
but if it is to lasting be

forgiveness is the key

Author’s first airplane, Cessna 172 Sky Harbor Airport, Phoenix, AZ

November Eight Triple One Golf

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Travel / tagged Airplane, Grand Canyon, Plane / August 25, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

May you all be blessed
by a friend such as this

A friend that will forgive
full flaps at full speed

and a mercy stop in an alfalfa field
at the cost of a belly scrape

A friend that will take you
the length of the canyon grand
west to east in the sunset’s glow
below the rim and the radar’s paint

And never whisper a word

Author’s Aero Commander 680E,
Deer Valley Airport, Phoenix, AZ

Sharing a Bed with Richard Bach

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Relationships, Travel / August 22, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

“When you believe in something as true as the sky,”
he said, “you’re bound to find a few friends.”
- Richard Bach, “The Gift of Wings”
Pilots have been known
to sleep under a wing

though not ungrateful
when a friend takes them in

Our common friend was Jim

When I flew into Phoenix
I always stayed with him
and Richard did the same

even if not at the same time

Jim Higgins, North of Phoenix in his WWI replica SE5A

Envy of the Lithe and Limber

Nostalgia, Pilots, Ranch Life / tagged Acrobats / April 18, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

How in the air they spin

In circuses and cirque soleil
and Barishnikov in the ballet

Cartwheels flips and pirouettes
like Blue Angels in their jets

their bodies that is but not mine

Unless you count time in the air
bucked off again by that old mare

Tennessee Ernie Ford Gives Again

Flight, Nostalgia, Pilots, Relationships / tagged Babies / March 2, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Carolyn at two and three
making more noise than a B17
would only settle down to sleep
to Tennessee Ernie singing hymns

A story that touched him deep
as he pinned on my CAF wings
under one at the Phoenix airshow — Image by Vincent Ciro from Pixabay

CAF = Commemorative Air Force
(formerly known as the Confederate Air Force)

The Cowboys The Pilots and Poets

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / February 28, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The Cowboys, the Pilots and Poets
The girls they say love them all

For the pilots have an air of the danger
of those who can die if they fall

While a poet’s crushed-petal scent
reflects all their beauty and pain

And a cowboy has a feel of the open
and a smell we won’t speak of again

Maybe the pilots help them feel
life’s edge of purest blue

While the poets act as mirrors
to depths they never knew

And the cowboys oh the cowboys
can touch them where it hurts

And they’ve got those fast
snap button shirts

Headwind

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots / February 26, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Heading west for stampede city
doing two miles a minute through air
with a Chinook pouring over the mountains
and a rising feeling that you’ll never get there

You’re going slower and slower
over the rough wind-swept ground
and you don’t want to land in that field
and of course, you don’t dare turn around

The needle and your knees
are all three on empty, knocking
and if you had a car, you’d pull over
get out the old can, and start walking

But you’ve made it, you land, and you park
and you know there’s someone you’ve got to thank
when the boys put thirty two gallons
in a thirty two gallon tank

Image by flo51vogt from Pixabay

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Ken Christopher on Elbow Room RapApril 18, 2024
Wow, go Neil!
Ken Christopher on Gravel Road BluesApril 18, 2024
Great picture and poem; gives me the homesick blues
Ken Christopher on Moon Lonely TonightApril 15, 2024
God be thanked for the Moon and her Posse
Tobin on Moon Lonely TonightApril 15, 2024
Your lovely haiku brought to mind another one that speaks of the moon's nightly vigil, Neil.... The moon is floating…
Ken Christopher on Heaven’s GatesApril 1, 2024
Ya, grace and place: the same thing

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