Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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A Neil a Day Poems

Hey There

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Grief, Healing, Heartache, Loss, Music / August 28, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Hey there
you with the scars in your eyes
love ever made a fool of you

Songwriters will change
the scars to stars and ever to never

Sometimes that sort of thing helps

That Important

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Art & Artists / August 27, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

"All girls should have a poem written for them even if we have to turn this God-damn world upside down to do it." – Richard Brautigan

If a tree falls in the forest
and no-one has written a poem for it
the rest of the forest must come down
to provide paper for the writing of it

Poetica Fugit

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / August 26, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Poems
peed in snow
or etched in ice
last at least till spring

Stick-marked in sand
until next breeze or tide

Rainforest rhyme - no time

First Poem

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Remembering / tagged Illness, Loneliness / August 25, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The summer I was twelve or thirteen
I had, at the same time
whooping cough and mumps

Every cough was fire
and unfair fate and gargling razor blades

It was summer, and I laid six weeks on a cot
in a screened porch and watched kids play by

Many years later I found, and lost again
a poem scribbled on a Rexall drugstore bag

A short rant with attempted humor at the end

What surprises and delights me now
when all was despair and nothing could be done
I was brought to poetry, and saved by a pun

In the Beginning

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / tagged Birth / August 24, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Small town doctor
tired and out of sorts
resenting a 3:00 am delivery
and snapping at his helping nurse

Stands little in awe of the first born son
come to save the ranch

One wonders if the promise of a poet
would have outweighed his desire for his bed

Hospital in Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan

What Time

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Aging, Connections / August 23, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

"I like the feeling of words doing as they want to do and as they have to do" - Gertrude Stein

Can a photograph stop time

Do hours spent fishing
count or not count in length of life

Can east-west Concorde add
or harps in heaven be heard
without space between the notes

How long can a poem
write itself before it mentions it to me

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

Flying Into Denver

Audio Recordings, Flight, Travel / tagged Snow / August 21, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Flying into Denver
starboard seat October

Mountains as white and light
as mom's meringue resting on a foothills crust

The Plane Was Late

Audio Recordings, Flight, Travel / August 20, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If anyone had said

If you wait
three hours in the Regina airport
and sit in a front left window seat
we'll fly a route around the storms
so you can watch a gibbousing moon
shine off the South Saskatchewan river
and the Red Deer meet it as it curls up
to the north and east from Medicine Hat

I'd have taken that deal in a Moose Jaw minute

Waxwings

Audio Recordings, Flight, Nature / tagged Birds, Joy, Spring / August 19, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Waxwings
drunk on berries and spring
are partying wild in our yard

Brother Icarus feeling such joy
might have too neared the sun
at the top of a loop like that

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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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