Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Aging

Poems and stories about growing older,aging, deteriorating

Poetry at the Retirement Home

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Aging, Connection, Gifts / August 14, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Every week they gather
where wisdom sometimes rhymes

One of the ladies
penned her first poem at ninety
and said it helped her rheumatism

Wrote a book at ninety five
as a gift for family and posterity
a book no-one else could have written

The Westminster in Austin Texas

Poet Laureate at Ninety Five

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Adversity, Aging, Art & Artists, Education, Resilience / August 12, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The new poet laureate is ninety five
he’s been working on his demons
for a long long time

Six weeks before the poet was born
his father burns his demons out
by drinking carbolic acid in the park

Mother burns father’s pictures
forbids mention of his name

Young Stanley finds one in the attic
and asks about the man

She tears the picture to shreds
without a word, and slaps him hard
six decades later he still felt the sting

Bright boy gets scholarship to Harvard
Okay but forget about teaching classes
these were not the days when a Jewish boy
could teach their ivy league asses

Marries a poet, moves to honeymoon farm
she disappears, never to be heard from again

The new poet laureate has had plenty of pain
each day he wakes as a poet, not a man of ninety five
still seeing everything new – still glad to be alive

Stanley Kunitz, Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Teacher and Gardener (July 1905 – May 2006)

Alice’s Father

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Remembering / tagged Aging, Alzheimers/Dementia / August 11, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Farther and farther he sank
below the surface of dementia

And yet like a salmon
in his homeland of Scotland
we would rise to the words
of a favourite poem

Grab the hook and leap
the length of the line

Three Strikes

Audio Recordings, Remembering / tagged Aging, Alzheimers/Dementia, Baseball, Friendship, Sports / August 10, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My sportswriter friend has Alzheimers now
and I wonder what happens
behind that bright brow

When we were kids, he was the guy
who knew each homer and pop fly
and every player's RBI

Grew up to travel with the pros
what he didn't know, why nobody knows

And now soggy-brained he tromps
through sub-sequitorial swamps
the mind once quick as a cat's
drowning among the stats

Rene Davis – Sportswriter for the Winnipeg Free Press

Playing Old 78s at the Nursing Home

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Aging, Alzheimers, Dementia, Forgetting, Memory / August 9, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Aunt Myrtle
skips a groove from time to time

The needle, still diamond sharp
plays 1952 for a round or two

Then the niceness of the people here
Grandpa's bad temper, and the size of the long kitchen at the farm

The sweetness of her husband
sometimes here and sometimes gone
and where is he now?

Reminded that he died some years ago with quick humour still intact, replies
That would explain why he never comes to visit

1 Reply

The Man in the Desert

Audio Recordings, Remembering / tagged Aging, Grief, Memory / August 8, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The man in the desert remembers
and a tear begins to form

A tear so long unleashed
ninety percent of the water is gone

Dragging its chain of crusted drops
it carves a white canyon
down his long and leathered face

A cracked tongue between cracked lips
reaches to taste it - Oh so sweet

Photo by Robert Murray on Unsplash

1 Reply

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

The Albums

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Aging, Family / June 10, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Mother's shrinkage was marked by domicile

House, apartment, retirement and nursing home
shedding at each move, furniture, china, and art
except for, and never, the old photo albums
heavy in padded leather brown and green

Each visit when conversation stuttered to a stall
(Religion all but Baptist drowned and what use is weather without crops)
out would come the albums
and in we all would dive
for pennies bright and shiny
at the bottom of the pool

Here's one from 1958
How young the queen looked then

School Reunion

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Aging, Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, Friendship, School, Sports / May 26, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I went to school with supermen
all fearless and bulletproof
in hockey, football and life

They couldn’t be hurt
and if there was any doubt
take two aspirin and run it out

Today their knees lock up
a golf club swing cracks a rib
one steps wrong - his leg’s in a cast

They’re getting more human by the day
and sometimes even at night

I blame it all on the hole in the ozone
letting in more and more kryptonite

1 Reply

Two Pictures of Hawaii

Audio Recordings, Remembering, Travel / tagged Aging / March 21, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

On the east side of Oahu
when the sun comes up just right
you can see the mountains of Molokai and Maui

In picture number one
I am standing in the foreground
trim and twenties, trying to look like I belong

In picture number two
I am the camera, and the picture ages with me

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