Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Odyssey

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

In Greece

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth, Travel / tagged Atlas, Echo, Illiad, mythology, Narcissus, Odysseus, Odyssey, Sisyphus, Tantalus / September 14, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In Greece I remember and meet myself everywhere
I am Socrates questioning
I am the athlete striving, the architect planning
the builder building, the potter shaping
the sculptor seeking, the warrior dying
and the poet pointing

In Greece I am all men and all gods as well
and I remember how many times, in this life alone
I have pushed the rock endlessly uphill
carried the world on my shoulders
and had my liver eaten by the savage bird

How many times
I have fallen in love with my own reflection
reached out for the sweet grapes and sweet water to find them moving always beyond my grasp
been forced to echo only what others have said
tied myself to the mast to resist the siren's call

Fought in a thousand wars full out on the open field or sea
or hidden in the belly of a wooden horse

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