Pilots – Page 3 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Pilots

How to Hook a Guy to Fly

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots / July 12, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Buy him a ride with a barnstormer before he's ten
and see how big he grows as the town grows small

Put First Flight $5.00 in a magazine ad in Hawaii
Let the pilot do the take off and hand over the controls
Let him fly Waikiki beach to Diamond Head and back

The Barnstormer and the Boy

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged escape, Growing up / July 11, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In the little plane, just the pilot and me
up up up into the prairie air

Climbing and gliding and floating free
high above the county fair

The town looked small from way up there but hell... it looked small from anywhere

It was the changing people into ants
that I loved best and wanted again

Being on the wrong side of relative bigness had been causing me a lot of pain

Saskatchewan from the Skies

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Pilots, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Perspective, River / July 7, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Man lays down grids
while nature smiles in wander

This is hard to see from a tractor
but your neighbour Wally has a plane

It won't look the same below again

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

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