Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Community

Earning the Knowing Nod

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Community, Connections, Experience, Recognition / November 25, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You have been to the same school
sat at the same desk with a tack on the seat
and a ruler
with a ruler rapping your knuckles raw

You have been equally
but differently broken and healed by love

You meet across a room or in a grocery or airplane aisle

They nod, you nod, you both smile

Mittens

Audio Recordings, Ranch Life / tagged Community, Leaving Home, War / November 9, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Fingers in mittens
are family keeping
each other warm

The cold indifference of gloves
much like the city fold that wore them

Pilots in the war had
mittens with a trigger finger
to do what needed to be done

Somewhere we had got a pair
a hero sometimes has to leave home

The Two-Headed Calf

Audio Recordings, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Community, Culture, Diplomacy, Intolerance / May 20, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In our part of Saskatchewan
the settlers were French or other

Our ranch and farm were of the other
and fences more than wire barbed

Culture, religion, language and more
meant my love of one went nowhere

The birth of a two-headed calf
should have come as no surprise
its mother not wishing to take sides

Fowl Supper

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Community, Harvest, Sharing / September 22, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Don't call it fall
even though it happens then

Because it's all
about turkey and the trimmings
and the trimmings are community

Men had the toil and the joy
of bringing in the sheaves
Women the toil and joy
of turning them into bread and pies

In Tibet and the Southwest states
sand paintings are made and blown away
nothing is permanent so they say
nobody counts how long the feelings stay

1 Reply

Pulling Pipe

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / tagged Community, Heroes, Struggle, Work / September 18, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Trouble down the well
and me, my dad and my brothers
are Texas roughnecks

pulling, spinning and stacking pipe
pipe and rod and "Careful dammit!
If you drop that rod the well is shot"

We're Red Adair, fighting a fire
we're wet and muddy and cold and made
and we've got to get it done by dark

The gold down there's not black but red
and iron rich sea hiding away
from the pulling power of the prairie sun

Looking back fifty years from a poet's perch

I pull, spin and stack
metaphor and meaining

Back then it was just men
doing what they had to do

and white-faced cattle waiting

Catching for the Wilcox Co-ops

Audio Recordings / tagged Baseball, Community, Socialism, Sport, Team / September 15, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The co-operative character of Canadians
has kept more than one Bay Street wolf at bay
and the Wheat Pool saved many farmers from sharks

The position I played was called back-catcher then
assuming every player on the field got to catch as well

The Co-op lumber yard sponsored our captainless team
and I got to put some lumber on the ball often but not far
Home runs are elitist anyway
everyone should have some chance to put a mitt on a hit

Service

Audio Recordings / tagged Care, Community, Death, Funeral / May 29, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Every small town funeral
church ladies serving tea
and sandwiches and cake

Love
through shaking hands
spreads in quivering waves
out across the jellied salad

Sunday at Maria’s

Audio Recordings / tagged Celebration, Community, Faith, Religion / May 26, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The kind of church you only get in Austin

All the great gospel singing without the sermon

And when you put your money in the collection plate

You get back not only blessings

But also, a taco and a beer

Translating from the German

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Authoritarians, Belief, Belonging, Community, Dictators, MAGA, Nazi, Totalitarianism, Trump / January 8, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes - Mark Twain
A German woman rich in years and living now in Austin
asked for some help with a poem she was trying to write

As a young girl she had been part of the Hitler Youth
whose slogan was Strength Through Joy and she felt both
and more alive than she had ever felt before or even since

What she knew now had a choke-hold of “You can’t write that”
the truth of pure feeling bemuddled with the truth of leaders lying

With help she got it written - it might mean something to you now

How Is Your Fire

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Aboriginal, Community, Connection, First Nations, Indigenous Peoples, Mental Health, Spirit / June 21, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In honour of National Aboriginal Day also known as National Indigenous Peoples Day

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Nancy Fierstien on Eyes of FriendsNovember 6, 2025
Lovin' this one, line after line!
Nancy Fierstien on Light on LeavesNovember 2, 2025
Yet another favorite of mine! How can I hold back this "THANK YOU!" ???
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!

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