Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Childhood

Buffalo Chips

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Manure, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Childhood, Play / October 3, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Lily pads floating
on the sea of prairie grass

Heat for the tepees
or the homesteader's cabin

Nothing wasted in the West

And every boy knew
that a good sharp stick or a pointy-toed shoe
would let you know
if one was just right, or still a little too new

And I'm here to tell you, that compared to a good dry chip
meeting a West wind's invitation
a Frisbee is a weak and poor, plastic imitation

Grandma Brander

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Games / July 12, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Mother would sometimes stop our play and send us to visit her mother in that little white house
She may have had grand stories to tell, about her childhood in England and Ontario and her brother lost at sea, and our grandfather whom we'd never met
What was he like - Were we like him - Would we want to be
It was a leap we never took, and spent afternoons in leaps more comfortable to us all - small coloured marbles over small coloured marbles in the inscrutability of Chinese Checkers

Blue Spruce

Audio Recordings, Family, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Birds, Childhood, Play / July 9, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

It may have been about thirty feet tall
taller when you're small

And on the very top would sit
the great horned owl
If the anti-Christ were to have a Christmas tree
he could have capped it as the perfect dark angel
We cowered by the corner of the house
our very blood frozen pretty to his predator eyes
Yet when he flew away
we could snap - as only children can
from fear to play
run to divide the branches and return once more to the soft-needled floor
One little two little three little Indians in our magic tepee in a land of long ago and not so far away

1 Reply

Blue-Eyed Boy

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Dog, Freedom, Joy / July 8, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Blue-eyed boy blasts off from breakfast
like a quail on a rail
Collie dog leaps on board
and they're off across the prairies
barely touching the tops of hills
Sun gives warmth or cloud gives shade
all depending on his whim
birds and rocks and swaying grass
everything living embraces him
Burrs don't stick and thorns don't prick
even fences joining in the play
happily turn their barbs away
Floating along on the wings of four
won't be long till they slam that door

2 Replies

Memories of Three or Four

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Childhood / July 7, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I remember being nestled
in that old dance kitchen
deep in the warmth of washday Monday
The Maytag's liquid sounds mixing
with the gentle driving chugs
of the little gas engine
Sloshing and chugging sloshing and chugging
as I curled up beside it
in the great pile of laundry
rich with the smells of the people I loved
Half asleep half awake I floated there
all my senses safely cradles and warmed
and part of a rhythm and a sound
like a heartbeat in a womb

Mud

Audio Recordings, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Play, Spring / May 2, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

There ain't nothin like mud
for misry and fun
For curse deep
wheel to the axle
and rivers with sticks
and squish tween the toes
and fallen on top of
the one that just fell
and pants stiff to crackn
for you're half the way home
Grown ups are no fun

Little Church

Audio Recordings, Family / tagged Childhood, Religion / April 8, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sometimes, as far from everywhere as we were,
a visiting or student minister would make the
long trek and our one room school would
become a church for the day

It didn’t happen often
so the first time my three year old brother
sitting in the second row heard him say
“Jesus Christ”
he turned and said
“He swore mom, the minister swore”

“Shh” said my mother,
“He swore, he swore, he swore” said Wally
every effort to silence him only increasing his
insistence and volume

Most fun that most of us, except my mother,
ever had in church

2 Replies

Why the Collectors Aren’t Collecting My Comic Book Collection

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia / tagged Boys, Childhood / January 7, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

peanut butter, bacon, candy and mud

roll em up fold em up
lug them everywhere love

and brothers

Life & Lego

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia / tagged Childhood, Play, Simplicity / November 27, 2021 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Remember when
life and Lego were simple

You could use the blocks
the few shapes that you had
to build any world that you wanted

There were no thousand piece sets
or thousand pieces of competing news

No thousand ways, not even one
to get it wrong

With thanks to Zetafonts for the title typeface
Font: Arista Pro Family by Zetafonts -http://www.zetafonts.com/collection/8

Sticks & Stones

Audio Recordings / tagged Childhood, Cruelty, Scars / October 9, 2021 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sticks and stones can
break my bones but
words will never hurt me

People who write such piffle
are well meaning I suppose

But little do they know
of boys in their growing up
who oft welcome broken bones
as a chance to show their stones

While the words
the words are with them yet
seldom with the broken places
stronger where they set

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