Flight – Page 2 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Flight

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

Envy of the Lithe and Limber

Audio Recordings, Flight, Ranch Life / tagged Ability / August 26, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

How in the air they spin

In circuses and cirque soleil
and Barishnikov in the ballet

Cartwheels, flips and pirouettes
like Blue Angels in their jets

their bodies that is but not mine

Unless you count the time in air
bucked off again by that old mare

Word Divisions

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / tagged Communication / August 20, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You can know your native language
and still feel all alone
as pilots talk to pilots
in a code that’s all their own

Yet not even one to one
can they share that love of air
or touch the other’s feelings
of the fear and beauty there

Sailors talk to sailors
of wind and sail and rope
of nights upon the ocean
of courage and of hope

Yet the words just can’t convey
their love of sea and air
nor touch the other’s feelings
of the fear and beauty there

And though cowboys talk to cowboys
in a special kind of drawl
there’s still a space between them
the words can’t tell at all

Not those nights of cold and stars
with coyotes on the air
nor the call of open spaces
with the fear and beauty there

Watch as lovers talk to lovers
in ways only two can share
as they build between them
a framework light and fair

While a web that’s spun of maybes
hangs so fragile in the air
that one false word can shatter
into pain, the beauty there

And yet

There are still some crazy poets
out riding hatless in the sun
still trying to do the very thing
we all know can’t be done

Still Quixoting for a language
that can speak to everyone

1 Reply

Deer Valley Airport

Audio Recordings, Flight, Nostalgia / tagged Airplanes, Aviation, Friendship, Pilots / August 19, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The man who flies an airplane... must believe in the unseen - Richard Bach

In the northern environs of Phoenix
the air is dry enough for old airplanes
and The Red Baron bar wet enough for dry pilots

Along the double row of yellow hangers
A Mark X1V Spitfire, a 1930’s Great Lakes
a Ryan pt 22 Eisenhower supposedly soloed in
and Jim Higgins’ WW1 reproduction SE-5a biplane

Whether you are hangering a Cessna or a T-33
you are part of a private club with no paperwork or fees
and get to sip champagne with Blue Angels after the show

In honor of National Aviation Day and all the author’s friends in the sky

Wake Turbulence

Audio Recordings, Flight, Travel / tagged Birds / July 7, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Deep in the night the great horned owl

strokes silence with silence

If you land a small plane behind a 747
(Don't land a small plane behind a 747)
If you land a small plane behind a 747
the invisible vortex from its wingtips
can toss you back into the air
or sla you hard
into the ground

Behind the great horned owl
the softness of its passing hangs in the air

Barn Swallows

Audio Recordings, Farm, Flight, Ranch Life / tagged Birds / July 6, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

They swoop
from beneath the eaves
carving an invitation
to the big red ship
Come slip your moorings
and follow us across the sea

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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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