Remembering – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Remembering

Jim

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Aging, Persepective, Tobacco / November 26, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

First year on the ranch one of the hands was Jim
seventy years old and Methuselah to my twenty-one

Five foot two with always a chew
never walked but ran wherever he went
tractor to truck, house to barn he never slowed down

Now that I've reached his age and passed it
starting to realize what he might have been running from

An Archaeology of Memory

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Aging, Memory / November 25, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Old cowboy in the nursing home
eyes closed
hands moving slow
bunching up and smoothing out
hills lower and higher than the albums show

Gentle that slope for the prairie wool
steepen it a little for the winter sled
push up a mountain for a boy and his dog
lope a meadow for the tall-horsed teen

Back on the ranch again
excavating in the Plasticine

Memory Care

Audio Recordings, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Aging, Alzheimers/Dementia, Care, Love, Memory / November 24, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Will the memories I want to remember
last longer than those I'd like to forget

Will I still remember how to tie my shoes
when I've grown too stiff to reach them

Will you be there to remind me of you
will you kindly tie that shoe

For Paul and Linda Fite

1 Reply

Where Were You When

Audio Recordings, Farm, News, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Assassination, Death, John Kennedy / November 22, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The story of how John F. Kennedy was killed
still mixes in with the story of how I heard it

Half a sentence tugging at my greasy sleeve
as I rush from the parts store in Moose Jaw

Picking up more on CBC radio in the pickup
heading west at eighty on Highway One

The urgency of the world waiting
for more news on his condition
not greater in a time of harvest
than my father's anxiety
to get the damn thing fixed
and the crop off before it rained

The moment in time when Kennedy
succumbed to his head woulds
in a Dallas hospital
was lost in the sound of the combine

Thanks Be To Cod

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Cod Liver Oil, Health / November 6, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

We were only given
one vitamin in winter
and none in the summer

In summer we had gardens and sun
in winter the oil of the liver of fish
and we got it by big spoons full
not in Nothing going on here capsules

The children of today hardly learn
with opportunes for wisdom wasted
unable to measure how good for you
without the gauge of how bad it tasted

Storm Windows of the Soul

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Prairie Life, Winter / November 5, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Fall in Saskatchewan
and storm windows going up

Three round holes under the flap
for the Father, Son and Holy Ghost
to enter on Sunday
and the exhaust of the Maytag’s
little gas engine to exit on Monday

Nature will be held at bay
family and guests opening a door
will close it slam-ass quick behind them

It will be that way till a warm day in May
when ladders go up windows come down
and the pagan gods rush in again

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

Budapest

Audio Recordings, Remembering, Travel / tagged Broken Promises, Hungary, Immigrants, Invasion, Occupation, Refugees, Resistance, Revolution, Russia, Soviet Union, Uprising / October 24, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

This is the town of Tibor
who came to Canada
and tried to teach us soccer

These are the bullet holes
from f ifty six
when he was sixteen

Bullet holes made
by him shooting at Russians
or by Russians shooting at him

Here is the statue of Imre Nagy
standing on a bridge looking west
for the promised help that never came

News Haikus

Audio Recordings, Cows, Farm, Haiku, News, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / October 13, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Remember when news
was only some mare’s tail clouds
meaning rain was soon

Remember when news
was but the red bull pawing
meaning time to run

Remember when news
was from here to the far fence
one ranch at a time

Bridges and Other Kindling

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia, Remembering / tagged memories / October 5, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You can't sit in front
of the same campfire twice
as much as you think of how nice

You can't be as young
as you were when you clinked
those glasses in front of the hearth

But just think if you hadn't
what would keep you warm in the storm

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