Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Love

Father’s Poem

Audio Recordings, Family, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / tagged Love / June 17, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My father’s poems
did not come down to us on paper

He was eight years old when his mother died
his youngest brother not yet three

They say he adopted the care
of the sweet sad child
and told him a story each night

Night after night after night

New stories he made up each night

And he would gather him up in the story
and hold him there
until he slept

After the Service

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged Death, Hope, Love / February 18, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

After my mother’s funeral
I take a long quiet drive
across her beloved prairie

then fly across the country
to the home of my grandchildren

It is one thing to say that “life goes on”
something else entirely to hold it

Eulogy

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged Death, Heaven, Love / February 17, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My mother passes
from the womb of this life
to the new life of the next

It has been a difficult journey

My father is waiting for her
with two saddled horses

She is happy to see him
while still nervously scanning
for Jesus
who she thought would be there
to greet her

My father laughs

Plenty of time for that
in a place with no time

Let me help you up
onto this gentle roan
there’s a sunset I’d like you to see

Beautiful

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged Aging, Love, Marriage / February 15, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Dad in the hospital with family around
and a light in his fading eyes

Looking at Mom and saying
Isn’t she beautiful

And we looked at her anew and she was

Beautiful as the bride in the old black and whites
forever in color for him

Sonnet 43 Revisited

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / tagged Appreciation, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Love / January 11, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

How do I love thee
let me not count the ways

Lists are for laundry
and for going to the store

One item more or less
I would not love you less or more

Here’s a link to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s original: https://poets.org/poem/how-do-i-love-thee-sonnet-43

John and Mary

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Death, Love, Mourning / September 28, 2021 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

John Berry writes a poem
for his dear departed Mary
and reads it at all the open mics

It is a lovely poem
about parallel universes
and all the other ways
they might have met
or never met at all

He tells me it changes
every time he reads it

which makes sense
since it is well known
that you can never step
in the same poem twice

I hear it is also true of rivers

Teacher (in defence of schoolboy crushes)

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia, Relationships / tagged Education, Love, School / September 10, 2021 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

1 Reply

Lucky Reed

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / tagged Love, Music, Rumi, Valentine / February 19, 2021 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Who is luckiest in the whole orchestra? The Reed.
Its mouth touches your lips to learn music. - Rumi

And who most fortunate
in this pit of who plays who
but me to learn love from you

A weather-delayed Valentine

Image by shonamcq from Pixabay

1 Reply

Of Bears and Love

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Dreams, Fear, Love / September 5, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You could draw a hundred mile circle
around our Saskatchewan ranch
and not find a bear anywhere

And yet, there was always a bear

Chasing me
chasing me through my dreams
until I fell, always fell, into a well
and awoke still falling

They say, in falling dreams
you die if you hit bottom before waking

That was when I was four
I don’t dream that dream anymore

Yet when I find myself falling in love
tumbling down and down into love
that old bear is still there

And the fear to let go and hit bottom

Image by ArtTower from Pixabay

The Good Guys

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Friendship, Love, True Strength / July 27, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The good guys
are not the guys
who shoot the bad guys

The good guys
and plenty there are, but never too many

Are the ones
that gently shake the sun awake

Help it shine all day
and tuck it in with a forehead kiss

Happy 80th Birthday Larry!

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