Pilots – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Pilots

November 7858 Golf

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Remembering / July 15, 2023 / 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

Author’s first airplane, Cessna 172 Sky Harbor Airport, Phoenix, AZ

Climbout Sunsets

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Relationships, Travel / tagged Aging, Michelangelo, Supersonic Flight / July 14, 2023 / 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 went 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

Wouldn’t It Be Nice

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots / tagged Joy, Wonder / July 13, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Wouldn't it be nice
if you went out with your instructor one morning
and the blue foothills 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 much as 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 / July 12, 2023 / 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 in a 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

The Barnstormer and the Boy

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged escape, Growing up / July 11, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In the little plane, just the pilot and me
up up up into the prairie air

Climbing and gliding and floating free
high above the county fair

The town looked small from way up there but hell... it looked small from anywhere

It was the changing people into ants
that I loved best and wanted again

Being on the wrong side of relative bigness had been causing me a lot of pain

Saskatchewan from the Skies

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Pilots, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Perspective, River / July 7, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Man lays down grids
while nature smiles in wander

This is hard to see from a tractor
but your neighbour Wally has a plane

It won't look the same below again

Flying the Concorde

Audio Recordings, Pilots, Travel / December 21, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

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

Except when 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 ever I wish
to write a check for a smile or a kiss

Word Divisions

Audio Recordings, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Communication, Understanding / June 25, 2022 / 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

Charlie Golf Xray November Golf

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Travel / tagged Airplane, Maule, Plane / August 27, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

STOL stands for
Short Take Off and Landing

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

Looking for a metaphor

Author’s Maule M5-235 Calgary, AB Canada

November 7858 Golf

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Relationships, Travel / tagged Airplane, Cessna, Plane / August 26, 2020 / 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

Author’s first airplane, Cessna 172 Sky Harbor Airport, Phoenix, AZ

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