Remembering – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Remembering

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

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

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

Memories of Maui

Audio Recordings, Environment, Nature, News, Remembering, Travel / tagged Fire, Hawaii, Loss, Mourning, Whales, Wildfire / August 15, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When our family lived by Lahaina
Roberta would float
with her ears underwater
to hear the singing of the whales

With Lahaina gone will it change their song

Alice’s Father

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Remembering / tagged Aging, Alzheimers/Dementia / August 11, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Farther and farther he sank
below the surface of dementia

And yet like a salmon
in his homeland of Scotland
we would rise to the words
of a favourite poem

Grab the hook and leap
the length of the line

Three Strikes

Audio Recordings, Remembering / tagged Aging, Alzheimers/Dementia, Baseball, Friendship, Sports / August 10, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My sportswriter friend has Alzheimers now
and I wonder what happens
behind that bright brow

When we were kids, he was the guy
who knew each homer and pop fly
and every player's RBI

Grew up to travel with the pros
what he didn't know, why nobody knows

And now soggy-brained he tromps
through sub-sequitorial swamps
the mind once quick as a cat's
drowning among the stats

Rene Davis – Sportswriter for the Winnipeg Free Press

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

The Man in the Desert

Audio Recordings, Remembering / tagged Aging, Grief, Memory / August 8, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The man in the desert remembers
and a tear begins to form

A tear so long unleashed
ninety percent of the water is gone

Dragging its chain of crusted drops
it carves a white canyon
down his long and leathered face

A cracked tongue between cracked lips
reaches to taste it - Oh so sweet

Photo by Robert Murray on Unsplash

1 Reply

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