Pilots – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Pilots

When Travel Became Gravel

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

When the lines got longer

When the seats got smaller
and my knees locked up
on a ninety minute flight

When Westjet couldn't find
the hat I left right on the seat

When Boeing started cutting
to make more money on poorer
planes and have computers fly them

When they locked the cockpit door
so I couldn't chat with fellow pilots
like I did on the Concorde and more

Flying the Concorde

Audio Recordings, Flight, Nostalgia, Pilots, Travel / August 22, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I am not immune to the desire
to wind the stem of old time back
and with as much success as most

Except with the Concorde flew the sky
and I, pilot to pilot in the cockpit stood
and watched the earth reverse for me
on a flight from London to DC

What have I done you ask
with the slice of time I stole

Saved it in a bank of cloud
above the ocean eight miles up
where I can go if I ever wish
to write a check for a smile or a kiss

Poets, Pilots & Cowboys

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Flight, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / July 24, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

A poet will try to dissect the world
and he'll try to show you each part
and he'll write it all down with a pen
that he's dipped in an old carin' heart

While pilots hae the eyes of a hawk
and a strut in the way that they walk
and they give all that's in them to give
and they live every moment they live

And most cowboys are gentle not loud
and they're not all that good in a crowd
and they talk like they're about half asleep
but what they know boys and girls
they know deep

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

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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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