Travel – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Travel

Flying the Concorde

Audio Recordings, Flight, Nostalgia, Pilots, Travel / August 22, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

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

Except with 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 I ever wish
to write a check for a smile or a kiss

Flying Into Denver

Audio Recordings, Flight, Travel / tagged Snow / August 21, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Flying into Denver
starboard seat October

Mountains as white and light
as mom's meringue resting on a foothills crust

The Plane Was Late

Audio Recordings, Flight, Travel / August 20, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If anyone had said

If you wait
three hours in the Regina airport
and sit in a front left window seat
we'll fly a route around the storms
so you can watch a gibbousing moon
shine off the South Saskatchewan river
and the Red Deer meet it as it curls up
to the north and east from Medicine Hat

I'd have taken that deal in a Moose Jaw minute

The Magic of Moose Jaw

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Travel / July 27, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Who could sleep the night before
going to town in the truck with Dad

Him and me in the front
white faced cows in the back
mooing it clear they wanted to stay
as much as I wanted to go

There would be the stockyards
and building bigger than a barn
and lunch at the Harwood Hotel
veal cutlets for him, burger for me

Two men together, five and thirty five
one driving home in the afternoon sun
one curled up on the seat

Climbout Sunsets

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Travel / tagged Aging, Memory, Wonder / July 15, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

John Gillespie Magee
slipped the surly bonds of earth
reached out and touched the face of God

Planes are bigger and faster now
I in my Aero Commander
commander of the air

Climbing at dusk have set the sun
on the lip of the world
and held it there

Have rode the Concorde
faster than the speed of sound
and faster than the earth goes round
that can lift it up where it when down

And there are times I'd best the lark
to try to hold or yet turn back
baby's smiles and love's first spark

I think Magee, the reverence would see
as we all fight the dying of the light
and try to touch the Sistine finger
a little longer before night

Greece 2001

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Classic Literature, Sea sickness / July 3, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

We take the boat back to Athens
cold and windy and a little rough

Dorsey lies down all the way

If she is Helen returned
she might again cause the launching
of a thousand ships
but she would not sail on one

I have an ouzo and man the bow
swells rising through my feet
feeling the eternity of the sea

When the islands are out of sight
I still feel and could steer
by the shape of the waves

Looking Down on Cruise Ships

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Classic Literature, Crowds, Mediterranean, Odyssey, Spain / July 2, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Wide-windowed morning view
from the seventeenth floor of the W
moored on a peninsula off Barcelona

Below and to the right cruise ships five
each disgorging fifty times the number that peopled the prairie town of my youth
(and that sometimes seemed too many)

Ahead and to the east as far as eye can see
stretches Homer's wine-dark sea
where still sails the Argo and on deck - me

Inner Critic on Holiday

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Discovery, Joy / July 1, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You will get lost in Paris
it is not your fault, it was planned that way

You may find it unforgivably gauche
not to know the left bank from the right

Let it go

It is not necessary to criticize oneself here
they have waiters for that purpose

And looking out, not in
you may stumble Americanly
upon Marie's little side street shop
with bread as new as the cheese is old
and a three dollar wine to bridge them

or catch a brief glimpse of that seriously happy young man
pedaling down the very center of the Champs d'Elyse
one foot and a base fiddle resting on his skateboard

Don’t Worry Mate

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Humor / June 26, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Leaving Town

Audio Recordings, Relationships, Travel / tagged Despair, Home, Separation / June 25, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

With the last house at your back
and the last dog in the last yard
tired of barking

Still standing and still staring
at a line posing as horizon

The warmth and wounds of love
drying in the wind

Knowing that the world
is indeed flat
that you are only one
step from the edge
and that you will
fall off

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Sandi Hebley on How Fallen AngelsAugust 17, 2025
Indeed!
Nancy Fierstien on Unremember ThatAugust 16, 2025
Gonna be inclined to share this one at my Poets' Tea reading tomorrow afternoon. Thanks, Neil!
Sandi Hebley on Memory Lane JoggingAugust 5, 2025
Lovely!
Sandi Hebley on Dad and Death at WarAugust 4, 2025
😢
Sandi Hebley on One for the AuntiesAugust 3, 2025
Wow!

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