Family – Page 9 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Family

Dia de los Muertos for Gringos

Audio Recordings, Family, Remembering / tagged Day of the Dead, Death, Memory / November 2, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Refused a feast
on but one day a year
they nibble at our
every hour

Cousin Wayne

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged Alcohol, Regret / October 7, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When Wayne was thirteen
he had the finest blondest hair
the finest features and the finest mind
of all the cousins round

A city boy and cooler about everything than us
until we took him hunting

When his first shot hit the rabbit
he ran and cried and held it till it died

At eighteen he quit school with A grades
a month before graduation to get a jump on a job
met a girl and bragged of achievement on first date

Over achievement it turned out to be
quick marriage, quick, two children, three

Army for security, liquor for the pain
it was twenty years before I saw him again

He was in a downstairs bar
sitting there as coarse and thick as adobe brick

I wanted to roll it all back
reach in for the lost fineness and yank it all inside out

And hold him like the rabbit when he cried
still innocent when it died

1 Reply

Cousins Round the Campfire

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships / October 6, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Green twig pals by blaze
one will bend up one bend down
one will tell the town

Author age 12 with cousins Wayne and Lyle

Grandmother Georgina

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged Art & Artists, First Nations, Native, Reconcilliation, Tradition, Wisdom / September 28, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Holding Up The Line

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Coffee, Harvest / September 23, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Barista, barista, if only you knew
what I'd like to order from you

Barista, barista
please, if you please
cold coffee in a Mason jar
like Momma sent to the fields
at harvest and at haying time

That much sugar
and that much cream
and no one wiped the lip
when they passed it round

Barista, barista
there's nothing I see
on that long fancy menu for me

I guess
I just came in to smell the coffee

Putting Up Preserves

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Canning, Garden, Harvest, Preserving, Survival, Vegetables / September 22, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

On the prairies thegarden is one word

While Dad and us boys are filling the bins
Mom and the girls are mustarding beans and pickling beets
filling Mason jars with a winter of good eats
then sealing them tight with red rubber rings

We are singing, it remembers like a song
A Canning time - Canning time - sing along

Sky and Air

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Relationships / August 30, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In the place where you were born
like the first look
into your mother’s eyes were the skies

The size color and cut of particles of dust

Mists rising where the mists rise
and the angles of reflection and refraction

Sunrises noons and sunsets
of your youth and of your longing

You can go home again

One More for Kenny

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged Death, Friendship, Grief, Separation / August 25, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

We were Siamese cousins
joined at the hip

So adept we never stepped
on each others toes

God the great and clumsy surgeon
has divided us

Wearing the right clothes
the scar doesn’t show
but people sometimes wonder
why I walk in circles

Playing Old 78s at the Nursing Home

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Aging, Alzheimers, Dementia, Forgetting, Memory / August 9, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Aunt Myrtle
skips a groove from time to time

The needle, still diamond sharp
plays 1952 for a round or two

Then the niceness of the people here
Grandpa's bad temper, and the size of the long kitchen at the farm

The sweetness of her husband
sometimes here and sometimes gone
and where is he now?

Reminded that he died some years ago with quick humour still intact, replies
That would explain why he never comes to visit

1 Reply

Memory Lane Jogging

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Remembering / August 6, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

There are things I remember I forgot
like the music of my father’s swearing
when a heavy hammer had hit his thumb

And like the words that mother said
when she called us all in to go to bed

There are others another layer down
that digging alone I would never f ind
that someone else has to bring to mind

So I listen to stories by family and friend
till strings pop up to pull with a knot at the end

1 Reply

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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!
Sandi Hebley on Dad and Death at WarAugust 4, 2025
😢
Sandi Hebley on One for the AuntiesAugust 3, 2025
Wow!

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