Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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The Cowboys The Pilots and Poets

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / July 23, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The Cowboys the Pilots and Poets
The girls they say love them all

For the pilots have and air of the danger
of those who can die if they fall

While a poet's crushed - petal scent
reflects all their beauty and pain

And a cowboy has a feel of the open
and a smell we won't speak of again

Maybe the pilots help them feel
life's edge of purest blue

While the poets act as mirrors
to depths they never knew

And the cowboys oh the cowboys
can touch them where it hurts

And they've got those fast
snap button shirts

Headwind

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots / tagged Close Call, Gratitude, Luck / July 22, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Heading west for stampede city
doing two miles a minute through air
with a Chinook pouring over the mountains
and a risisng feeling that you'll never get there

You're going slower and slower
over the rough wind-swept ground
and you don't want to land in that field
and of course, you don't dare turn around

The needle and your knees
are all three on empty knocking
and if you had a car, you'd pull over
get out the old can, and start walking

But you've made it, you land, and you park
and you know there's someone you've got to thank
when the boys but thirty-two gallons
in a thirty-two-gallon tank

Charlie Golf Xray November Golf

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Poems about Poetry / tagged Airplanes / July 21, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

STOL stands for
Short Take Off and Landing

Get off the ground
in a hunderd and fifty feet
stick a landing in about the same

Looking for a metaphor

November Eight Triple One Golf

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots / tagged Airplanes / July 20, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

May you all be blessed
by a friend such as this

A friend that will forgive
full flaps at full speed

and a mercy stop in an alfalfa field
at the cost of a belly scrape

A Friend that will take you
the length of the canyon grand
west to east in the sunset's glow
below the rim and the radar's paint

And never whisper a word

November 7858 Golf

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Relationships / tagged Airplanes / July 19, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You never forget your first

Beauty is nice, and grace
but if it is to lasting be

forgiveness is the key

Solo

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots / July 18, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

It was first solo cross country night
with all the fears of those new to flight

But the full winter moon lit a chessboard
of snow covered stubble and black fallow fields
and small creeks, winding east, from the mountains

All of the fears into the liquid moonlight melted
while flared nerves stayed open to the beauty

And the Cessna ran smooth at five thousand feet
I couldn't have been higher, at fifty

Wouldn’t It Be Nice

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots / July 17, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Wouldn't it be nice
if you went out with your instructor one morning
and the blue foothill sky was full of white puff ball clouds

And you smiled at each other
and began to play in and out of their magic
of shadows and light

And it felt as much lighter than air
as air is lighter than earth

And the hour took moments and forever
and the silence and awe followed you back
and he wouldn't even take your money for the ride

Now I know it's not legal to fly in clouds like that
so I'm not exactly saying that it happened
but wouldn't it be nice

How to Hook a Guy to Fly

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots / tagged Adventure, Learning / July 16, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Buy him a ride with a barnstormer before he's ten
and see how big he grows as the town grows small

Put First Flight $5.00 magazine ad in Hawaii
Let the pilot do the take off and hand over the controls
Let him fly Waikiki beach to Diamond Head and back

Climbout Sunsets

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Travel / tagged Aging, Memory, Wonder / July 15, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

John Gillespie Magee
slipped the surly bonds of earth
reached out and touched the face of God

Planes are bigger and faster now
I in my Aero Commander
commander of the air

Climbing at dusk have set the sun
on the lip of the world
and held it there

Have rode the Concorde
faster than the speed of sound
and faster than the earth goes round
that can lift it up where it when down

And there are times I'd best the lark
to try to hold or yet turn back
baby's smiles and love's first spark

I think Magee, the reverence would see
as we all fight the dying of the light
and try to touch the Sistine finger
a little longer before night

Reverence

Audio Recordings, Nature / tagged Faith, Respect, Teaching / July 14, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The prairie wind blows
from where the sun goes

stays up all night
to preach the grass
how to bow to its return

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Anonymous on CirclesJanuary 18, 2026
Both Gloria and I were touched by your poem. Congrats. Tom and Gloria
LeoraLawrence Porter on Sacred DanceJanuary 18, 2026
Thank you, from an unknowing dancing healer! as for my liking… While I greatly, greatly appreciate your clarity of voice…
barbara joy on MessagesJanuary 16, 2026
profound
Eda Lishman on For the PoetryJanuary 7, 2026
Neil: what a daily gentlre reminder ...this broight me many memories of walking out into the open prairie searching for…
NEIL MEILI on Grocery Shopping in AustinDecember 13, 2025
Thanks Pamela, Love to see some of your haiku and you and Pamela in the new year. All blessings, Neil…

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