Relationships – Page 42 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Relationships

Do You See What I See

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / October 6, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The coyote doesn’t howl at the moon
he howls to the other coyotes
to remind them to look up

Technology

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Horses / October 3, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The day breathed in
and the day breathed out

After lunch my father took a nap
– the horses had to rest

By supper time they were fed
fed and brushed and thanked

And then the tractors came
– and tractors do not nap

Not content with that small theft
they soon grew lights and stole the dark

He fed them gas, they pulled the plow

But not once, one to the other
did they ever speak of love

Great Uncle Tony and Uncle Werner at seeding time – a long time ago

Cousins Round the Campfire

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships / October 2, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Green twig pals by blaze
one will bend up one bend down
one will tell the town

Author age 12 with cousins Wayne and Lyle

Dogs and Boys

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / September 27, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Twenty thousand years
they walked the plains together

The boy did not know that
The dog did not know that

Author’s Uncle Bruce with Pepper circa 1928

Threshing Time

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Harvest / September 25, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I remember at Christmas
getting a great threshing machine
A block of wood with wooden spools nailed to the side
but I loved it as I loved the threshing

All through the long summer days
I would walk the fields with my dog
At night my mother rubbed strong liniment
on four year old legs
Growing pains she said, although one always hurt more
and didn’t seem to grow any faster

And the grain grew too, and passed me, and was higher
than I was. And then the harvest and the wonder of it
falling to the binder, and the magic of the machine
as it tied the sheaves and ke-chunked them into the carrier

Then the stooking – little teepees covering the prairie again
and the golden warmth of everything

And the threshing machine; they wouldn’t let me too close
It might eat me like it ate those sheaves, and like the men
in the crew could eat, and they could eat
even when it rained

While I sat for hours, nose to wet window
watching the great gray dinosaur
deep in the timeless mists

And hot clear windless days when everything sang and
the belt slapped and the machine came to life again
and wagons were on both sides
and the big horses were standing strong and ready
and switching flies with dignity

The sun caught the arch of the long plume of straw and
the chaff lifting, and the old hands fed the machine in a
sort of easy sweat-oiled rhyme and the new hands stood
on the sheaves they tried to lift each time

And the old hands laughed, and the new hands laughed
and they were men together

Magnets

Audio Recordings, Relationships / September 9, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

With the power of the poles
and the unlearned skill of compasses
we are drawn round the curve of the earth
And we touch, and move, and the iron filings dance

Of Bears and Love

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Dreams, Fear, Love / September 5, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You could draw a hundred mile circle
around our Saskatchewan ranch
and not find a bear anywhere

And yet, there was always a bear

Chasing me
chasing me through my dreams
until I fell, always fell, into a well
and awoke still falling

They say, in falling dreams
you die if you hit bottom before waking

That was when I was four
I don’t dream that dream anymore

Yet when I find myself falling in love
tumbling down and down into love
that old bear is still there

And the fear to let go and hit bottom

Image by ArtTower from Pixabay

Cousin Wayne

Audio Recordings, Family, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Alcohol, Regret / August 31, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When Wayne was thirteen
he had the finest blondest hair
and the finest features and the finest mind of all the cousins round
A city boy and cooler about everything than all of us until we took him hunting
When his first shot hit the rabbit
he ran and cried and held it till it died
At eighteen he quit school with A grades to get a jump on a job
met a girl and bragged of achievement on first date
Over achievement it turned out to be
quick marriage, quick, two children, three
Army for security, liquor for the pain
it was twenty years before I saw him again.
He was in a downstairs bar
sitting there as coarse and thick as adobe brick
I wanted to roll it all back
reach in for the lost fineness and yank it all inside out
And hold him like the rabbit when he cried
still innocent when it died

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

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

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