August 2022 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Monthly Archives: August 2022

Ode to a Dying Rose

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / tagged Death, Life / August 18, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If poems could not
be written about love and death
the shelves would be lighter for it

How much lighter you ask

How about empty

The Midas Touch

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Gifts / August 16, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

King Midas wrote poems
in the finest of gold

and gave them to friends
or so I am told

Barred as he was
from touching in any
ordinary way

The Indolent

Audio Recordings / tagged Aging, Retirement / August 15, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Having passed the age where
most have retired by choice or force
and with no particular trade to retire from
I watch sports on TV
all of which I played in my youth
with varying degrees of limited skill
and still care as much about the outcome
I read, because at ten
I fell in love with a teacher twice my age
And because bored was a word
never to be uttered on a working ranch
and the world infinitely interesting I carry on

Cloud Plowed Fields

Audio Recordings, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / August 14, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I hear that line at an Austin open mic.
and I want it - actually I want it back
this is my line, how did he find it first

In any case - I hear the line, and Bam!
I am back in a cloud-scudding sun-baking
Saskatchewan summer fallow summer

Black lands between the glowing gold
John Deere with its hard iron hooves
ripping up the roots and seeds
of the flowers no-one wanted
call them weeds

Sometimes cutting worms in half
(I hear that they grow back)

While the little poet sits
by the caragana hedge
choking on the flowers no-one wanted

Can’t Take the Farm Out of the Boy

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / August 13, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

What I learned
of poetry from my father
is that the tractor signs
at just this RPM

Author and his dad on Oliver 88 tractor

1 Reply

Cowboys & Ranchers

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / August 12, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Cowboys may love their horses
but it's the ranchers love the cows

The cowboys know it's their job to keep them critters safe
and pay and found depends
on their not coming to bad ends

But you won't catch a cowboy
with a soft light in his eye
counting again by one and ten
every head in the holding pen

And ranchers ain't so likely
when the summer flies are high
and the herd a scattered mess
to wish them all in a warmer place
than the sun-baked August West

Prairie Ear

Audio Recordings, Ranch Life / August 10, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Outer ear gathering
sounds of birds and wind
and hooves on spring grasses

Playing them soft on the drum
as hammer and anvil and stirrup
pass on the faint creaking leather
of my old Texas boot in the stirrup

Ripples wave down inner membranes
and tiny thousands of hair cells
move like grass in the valley
From pressure to impulse
and from sound to
symbol of
sound

All floating in the liquid balance of an easy lope

Grandfather’s Pipe

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Relationships, Remembering / August 9, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Long after he had died
I used to smoke my grandfather's pipe

Not really one of his old pipes
but a knobby meerschaum that I had bought
probably because it reminded me of him
the sweetness of his tobacco and his being
At least it reminds me of them now
Or was it him smoking it and me

Grandfather’s Moustache

Audio Recordings, Family / August 8, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The moustaches
of my grandfather and Carl Jung
(Twins separated at birth)
have lives of their own

Jung's stays in Switzerland
combing the unconscious

My grandfather's travels to Brazil and to Canada
gathers rainforest moisture, dirty thirties dirt
and remnants of strong cheese and pipe smoke
(Carl's contains some of that too)

When grandfather sneezes, I get to share it all

2 Replies

To The Zoo

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships, Remembering / August 7, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I went to the zoo with you
I went to the zoo with you

There were lions and tigers and elephants
and cotton candy too

but I went to the zoo with your
with you, with you, with you

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Ode to a Dying Rose
The Midas Touch
The Indolent
Cloud Plowed Fields
Can’t Take the Farm Out of the Boy

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