Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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A Neil a Day Poems

Leaving Town

Audio Recordings, Relationships, Travel / tagged Despair, Home, Separation / June 25, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

With the last house at your back
and the last dog in the last yard
tired of barking

Still standing and still staring
at a line posing as horizon

The warmth and wounds of love
drying in the wind

Knowing that the world
is indeed flat
that you are only one
step from the edge
and that you will
fall off

Arm’s Length

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Remembering / tagged Distance, Observation, Perspective / June 24, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If I went back
to the old town again
I might
have to leave
again to write about it

Mossbank, Saskatchewan, circa 2025

It Helped at the Time

Audio Recordings, Family / tagged Grief, Numbing, Sugar / June 23, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Today I visited the graves of my parents
flowers for my mother
tobacco for my father
and chocolate for the orphan boy

He had a stomack ache later
but it sure helped at the time

Sweet Memories

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Denial, Diabetes / June 22, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My mother's mother
lost a leg in the sugar wars

We dragged our butts across town to see her
she dragged hers across the hosue to serve us

You would think that each visit
might have served as a caution

But, as young minds
may twist and stay twisted

I took away instead
an infinite ability to ignore the obvious

and a taste for milk and ginger cookies

Grandma Brander

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Games / June 21, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Mother would sometimes stop our play and send us to visit her mother in that little white house

She may have had grand stories to tell, about her childhood in England and Ontario and her brother lost at sea, and our grandfather whom we'd never met

What was he like - were we like him - Would we want to be

It was a leap we never took, and spent afternoons in leaps more comfortable to us all - small colourd marbles over small coloured marbles in the inscrutability of Chinese Checkers

Small Town Grade Seven

Audio Recordings, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Death, Heartbreak, Small Town / June 20, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In a town of six or seven hundred
you get a cross section of the country

One classmate's father's suicide
with shotgun splattered walls

One boy my age, drowned
in an upturned truck in a muddy ditch

One with leukaemia, white as the snow

One redhead, Leslie French, as beautiful and mysterious as the language

One blonde, Shirley Long, to long for

She's only interested in grade 9 boys

One bruised heart

Not yet hard enough to be broken

Mossbank Mostly Moss

Audio Recordings, Family, Remembering / tagged Small Town / June 19, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Mossbank, Saskatchewan, circa 1955

Listening to Rain in Saskatchewan

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Home, Hope, Nourishment / June 18, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

It had rained
and it was raining
and it was going to rain

He has seen and heard rain
in many countries of the world
including the rain in Spain

This was not that rain

This was the rain of childhood
the rain of a young farmer
praying with his first field of flax

This was the rain
of 4 a.m. with his father
who got up with the summer sun
whether the sun got up or not
and made sure that you did too

A different father than yesterday
with sweat-caked furrowed brow

This was rain to nourish
your skin and bones and soul
and you can still only hear it here

Bit of Wisdom

Audio Recordings, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Aging, Control, Rebellion, Small Town, Youth / June 17, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Old man still tight
on the reins of his years
- Ted Kooser

In youth
he got the bit in his teeth a few times

Still trying to forget what the neighbors won't

Always rides with a tight rein now
chafing hard on a dentured mouth

No Leaners

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Games, Humor / June 16, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The man could throw a horseshoe

If you planted a roan upside down
he coulda shod her at twenty paces

Image by Beverly Buckley from Pixabay

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Nancy Fierstien on Hard to Get War Poems to RhymeJune 3, 2025
Thanks for sharing this one, my friend. It packs a good punch, line after line. I'll be glad to give…
Christie flaman on Going ProMay 17, 2025
Old cowboy saying: Never a horse that couldn’t be rode, never a cowboy that couldn’t be thrown Thank you for…
Ken Christopher on Going ProMay 16, 2025
That’s pretty funny, and fun to read
Nancy Fierstien on Spring Came InMay 12, 2025
You've certainly captured these crazy times with finesse and grace, my Friend!
Nancy Fierstien on Remembering WhenMay 8, 2025
I'm betting "slow motion" was never your style!

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