Poems about Poetry – Page 4 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Poems about Poetry

First Poem

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Remembering / tagged Illness, Loneliness / August 25, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The summer I was twelve or thirteen
I had, at the same time
whooping cough and mumps

Every cough was fire
and unfair fate and gargling razor blades

It was summer, and I laid six weeks on a cot
in a screened porch and watched kids play by

Many years later I found, and lost again
a poem scribbled on a Rexall drugstore bag

A short rant with attempted humor at the end

What surprises and delights me now
when all was despair and nothing could be done
I was brought to poetry, and saved by a pun

In the Beginning

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / tagged Birth / August 24, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Small town doctor
tired and out of sorts
resenting a 3:00 am delivery
and snapping at his helping nurse

Stands little in awe of the first born son
come to save the ranch

One wonders if the promise of a poet
would have outweighed his desire for his bed

Hospital in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan

What Time

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Aging, Connections / August 23, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

"I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do" - Gertrude Stein

Can a photograph stop time

Do hours spent fishing
count or not count in length of life

Can east-west Concorde add
or harps in heaven be heard
without space between the notes

How long can a poem
write itself before it mentions it to me

Poets, Pilots & Cowboys

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Flight, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / July 24, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

A poet will try to dissect the world
and he'll try to show you each part
and he'll write it all down with a pen
that he's dipped in an old carin' heart

While pilots hae the eyes of a hawk
and a strut in the way that they walk
and they give all that's in them to give
and they live every moment they live

And most cowboys are gentle not loud
and they're not all that good in a crowd
and they talk like they're about half asleep
but what they know boys and girls
they know deep

The Cowboys The Pilots and Poets

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / July 23, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

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

For the pilots have and 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

Charlie Golf Xray November Golf

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Poems about Poetry / tagged Airplanes / July 21, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

STOL stands for
Short Take Off and Landing

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

Looking for a metaphor

Peaking of Poetry

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth, Poems about Poetry / tagged Aging, Art & Artists, Creativity / June 28, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

They speak of writers past their prime
and nothing over forty worth your time

My trick
has been to start beyond that age
with my doggerel but a starving pup

Free to write
to a hundred with room left to improve

Circling Back

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Remembering / June 27, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

All those long days of youth
before I was a poet
lived but not noted

I go back now
guided by bend grass
and broken branches

Attaching
toe tags of meaning
to departed days and friends

Arm’s Length

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Remembering / tagged Distance, Observation, Perspective / June 24, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If I went back
to the old town again
I might
have to leave
again to write about it

Mossbank, Saskatchewan, circa 2025

How Can I Help

Audio Recordings, News, Poems about Poetry / tagged Danger, Obsession, Politics, Protest / June 8, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The insensate
tank clanks closer
as you bravely protest in its path

Should I join you waving
a sign in my best couplet rhyme

or do everything I can
to pull you from the path iin time

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Anonymous on CirclesJanuary 18, 2026
Both Gloria and I were touched by your poem. Congrats. Tom and Gloria
LeoraLawrence Porter on Sacred DanceJanuary 18, 2026
Thank you, from an unknowing dancing healer! as for my liking… While I greatly, greatly appreciate your clarity of voice…
barbara joy on MessagesJanuary 16, 2026
profound
Eda Lishman on For the PoetryJanuary 7, 2026
Neil: what a daily gentlre reminder ...this broight me many memories of walking out into the open prairie searching for…
NEIL MEILI on Grocery Shopping in AustinDecember 13, 2025
Thanks Pamela, Love to see some of your haiku and you and Pamela in the new year. All blessings, Neil…

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