Prairie Boy

Still On The Trail

(armadillos)

©1999

A. Neil Meili

Sometimes I toss

the alphabet into the air

making quick note of letters chosen by the sun

Sometimes I push it

around with my toe in the mud

slowly surprised by what turns up

CONTENTS

Frogs

Deep Chicken

Millennium

John Hawk

Icarus

Small Town – Grade Seven

Bull Dancers

Roberta’s Wedding

Salmon Leaping

Sunday Afternoon

Dancing the Dreaming

For Mary Who Loves Horses

The Apple

Snowman

Not in My Yard

Shaman’s Heart

Big Boys

I’m Back

I’m Glad I Saw

Responsible

Ode to Neruda

New World

FROGS

In my youth all the ponds and spring ditches

were alive with frogs in the millions

grasses waved with their leaping

night was loud with their song

Wise miners knew well to listen

when canaries stopped singing

We block out the silence of the frogs

like we blocked out their songs

and we sleep

DEEP CHICKEN 22

7

Did the chicken cross the road

to become the egg

Or to look for it’s lost lips

and the lips of it’s lost love

Or as a religious observance

having no hands to cross itself

Or merely because of all the

vegetarians that lived on the other side

THE MILLENNIUM

It is always a little exciting

to watch an odometer

reach the hundred thousand mark

The anticipation as it climbs

The thrill as the last zero snaps solidly into place

One frozen moments grace

And then as suddenly it is gone

quickly clicking ones and two and threes

it carries on

Or more likely we miss it altogether

distracted by a large truck or a short skirt

JOHN HAWK

John Hawk came down

out of Kansas – moving fast

Black Hair and feather flying

Bare feet grip the floor

as

he breaks from the crowd

Seize the mic seize the hearts

seize the minds

Look out world

there’s a warrior out there

A warrior rearmed

with the weapon of words

ICARUS UNBOUND

Within the greater urge

of man to soar and fly

It is not uncommon

that some may try and die

Salmon must return to spawn

birds must south and northward fly

The Buddha and the Christ

give focus to the martyr’s eye

The fault lies not

in these unalterable things

But in the material

with which he built the wings

SMALL TOWN – GRADE SEVEN

In a town of six or seven hundred

you get a cross section of the country

One classmates father’s suicide with shotgun

splattered walls

One boy my age, drowned

in an upturned truck in a muddy ditch

One with leukemia, white as snow

One redhead, Leslie French, as beautiful and

mysterious as the language

One blond, Shirley Long, to long for

She’s only interested in grade nine boys

One bruised heart

Not yet hard enough to be broken

BULL DANCERS OF CRETE

Two thousand pounds of power

thunders toward one hundred of slim youth

No picadors to wound and slow

No red caped cowardice to step aside

The meet straight on

Bull head down, youth’s held high

Horns grasped, the head snaps up

in anger and surprise

They flip in beauty over a broad back

Converting and transforming

twenty to one ratio

power into

grace

ROBERTA’S WEDDING

When I returned from anywhere by air

Roberta would run

full out across the crowded floor

take a gymnast’s leap ten feet away

and fly through the air into my arms

So pure a show it was of joy and love

so affirming of the goodness of all life

so full of youth’s unquestioned faith

she would be safely caught and held

that travelers all around

would stand in awe

Today she runs across a crowded floor

and leaps with equal joy

into the arms of another man with

equal trust she will be safely caught and held

And now I see what all those others saw

and I stand back in awe

SALMON LEAPING

In the very center of New Brunswick

Half way between the equator

and the north pole

Half way up the river Mirimichi

Half way between the spawning grounds and

the sea the salmon stop to rest in quiet pools

As you watch, one or two or three

will leap high above the water, twist in the

air and splash down again

I asked the best guide on the river

and the best outfitter too

Why do they jump like that

They said nobody knew

I suspect it’s all part of something simple

that has always been true

There’s just a lot of joy in doing

what you were born to do

SUNDAY AFTERNOON

It was a Sunday afternoon about a year ago today

I couldn’t sit I couldn’t stand I just knew I couldn’t stay

So I took off for Toronto fifteen hundred miles away

Two days of boring meetings,

couldn’t stand to have one more

didn’t know where I needed to be

but it wasn’t here I knew for sure

So I grabbed a train to Windsor

and Detroit which lies next door

Outside spring was springing and calling more and more

and I’d get to see some country that I’d never seen before

Oh, the sheep were soft upon the land

and there was magic in the day

as I sipped my run and cola

and rhymed couplets all the way

Checked in on Wednesday, wondering what to do

maybe I could try to call a good old friend or two

There was a man I’d met in Banff

just three weeks before

a man of love and wisdom

that I’d like to see once more

And a lady of my poems

that I’d seen just twice before

thirty minutes in an airport

and two hours on the shore

He was busy in a meeting, she answered on first try

she had booked off work without knowing why

And when I told her that I was in her town

she said, “I’ve got a story and I’ll be right down”

It seems that her grand dad

who had raised her as a child

had died not long ago

and the grief had drove her wild

The family all were fighting for pennies on his eyes

and there was no one there to hear her heartfelt cries

So she ran from that hospital not knowing what to do

and stood on the highest hill along in a sky of blue

And loudly called my name

“Please come, please, I need you”

When I asked had she made this cry

and I had come real soon

“Oh it wasn’t very long ago

just Sunday afternoon”

DANCING THE DREAMING

Aborigines on an Austin Stage

Dancing the dreaming

But something’s wrong

They dance in stage lines not sacred circles

Men and women dancing together

Even I now that’s not how they did it

My Aussie friend points out that they have

no scars of initiation

Drug store cowboys

in five and dime dream time

The phoniness bothers me for quite a while

They are not really doing the sacred songs

They probably don’t even know the sacred

songs

Of course if they did they wouldn’t be singing

them for us

On a Texas stage

in five and dime dream time

And yet there is something happening

below the surface

that starts to pull me in

The didgeree-do is made from a real tree

The circular breathing to blow it is there

strong and free

Something real is rising

Rising up through it all

Something I do not understand

Something they don’t even understand

If you listen real close you can hear it

below and through and beyond it all

Fifty thousand years of DNA singing

FOR MARY WHO LOVES HORSES

I have ridden the fence line

without believing in fences

I have been one with the movement of horse

the strength and speed of horse

the grace of horse and the

soul of horse

I have been one with the wind

and the high rolling hills

and the sky

I have stepped down

with my hands filled with staples and pliers

For the welfare of cattle and neighbors

who still have need of believing

in fences

THE APPLE

And when all had been named

they ate of the apple

and began to name again

And the names were

Good and evil

And our mouths

are yet full of that naming

and the taste of that judging

Spit it out

and you are back in the garden

SNOWMAN

I am a man

I can stand and write my name

and poems in the snow

Spring is a woman

Grass will grow through them

warmth will wipe them out

NOT IN MY YARD

We’re living in a leaf blower world

Why should we

rake them and bag them and burn them

and recycle them and compost and mulch them

When we can go down to the Handy Dan

and just hand some money to the man

Got a two and a half horse with overdrive

gonna be somebody else’s problem now

Varooom, Varooom, this is easy

this an’t hard

they’re heading for the streets and the neighbors yard

Wait a minute he’s bought a five

and he’s blowing them back again

so we drive to the store and get a ten

he gets a fifteen, we get a twenty

now the s.o.b. has a twenty five

Next trip I’m getting an UZI

SHAMAN’S HEART

Two centuries back I look down at legs

covered with buckskin white as whitest sand

In the valley below are the teepees

I go to my home my wife rises to greet me

I speak her name

like water laughing over small stones

Feel full and more with a love for her

as warm as the summer dawn

strong as my manhood rising

I am a chief and the son of a chief

not brave enough to deny

the life of a brave

Though Shaman at heart

not Shaman enough to break

the heart or the will of my father

I hang by my flesh at a sundance

and lead the young men to war

Say good bye to my wife and babe in her arms

ride off to the folly of a raid with no cause

As spirit rises from body

my enemies honor my courage

cut my hear from my chest and eat it

Neither friend – nor foe – nor father know

it is not the heart of a brave

BIG BOYS

The deep sadness

The red anger space

The hang on tight we

may end up in the next county passion

All hidden behind the great wall of control

That terrible land where I locked

the little boy who could cry

And if I open the door to one of these

will they come bursting out

And with what years

of built up force behind them

I know big boys don’t cry

I don’t remember why

Would they die

I’M BACK

I went away but I’m back

I’ve met the Queen

but I’m back

I’ve worked and grown till I dropped

and learned till my ear wax popped

I’m better and kinder and wiser

with an armful of gifts

and I’m back

Oh dear, isn’t anybody here

I’M GLAD I SAW

The tall old lady in Austin bent over her walker

inching her way across the street to the Driskill

She has a few drinks, listens to Margaret sing

has a few more and starts to sing along

About midnight she stands up to her full six feet

picks up that walker, and it never touches the street

The city crew in Edmonton all leaning on their shovels

watching a pretty girl walk their way

As she passes they pick up their shovels as one man

Turning in chorus line perfection they set them down

and lean on them as they watch her walk away

A blind man stands on a narrow street in Florence

A man comes up behind him, grasps his elbow

point’s the man’s white cane into traffic

right in front of our hotel car

Brakes screech, he pushes and follows

the blind man across the street

leaving him and us with mouths ajar

Climbout sunsets gain altitude as sun sinks

into the ocean or mountains, one more hour of beauty

A sun dance in the Dakotas, a fire walk in California

sunrise on Oahu, babies smiles, and Northern Lights

And You

RESPONSIBLE

In ancient China

you paid your doctor when you were well

If you happened to fall ill

payment stopped until you were better

In ancient Mexico

if a person stole he was punished

If he stole because he was hungry

the civil servant

in charge of the village was punished

Are we missing something here

ODE TO NERUDA

A NEW WORD

We need a new word

A word for how you feel about someone

that you want to hang around with all the time

I mean really want to be with every night and day

A word for that feeling that makes your heart sing

every time you see them

Causes a warm smile to rise every time you think of

them

Love doesn’t quite do it anymore

it has been battered and bruised and bled too often

A word for that feeling that wherever you meet them is

in a land of

acceptance, filled with air so light that fear cannot

breathe it

Friend won’t do, even though,

friends are people you can count on, and who can count on

you,

An brother this, and brother that, or sister this and

sister that are now used by people who have nothing

more in common than a perceived common enemy

No, we need a new word

Something as fresh and clean and bright and pure and

as innocent as a baby’s chortling laugh

Yes we need a new word and we need it bad

I sure hope we don’t find it

back quote

“We keep your poems

by the bed, and read

them when we can’t

get to sleep”

J.R. Wright