Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Connections

Earning the Knowing Nod

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Community, Connections, Experience, Recognition / November 25, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You have been to the same school
sat at the same desk with a tack on the seat
and a ruler
with a ruler rapping your knuckles raw

You have been equally
but differently broken and healed by love

You meet across a room or in a grocery or airplane aisle

They nod, you nod, you both smile

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

Memory Lane Jogging

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Remembering / tagged Connections, Experience, Sharing, Story / August 5, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

There are things I remember I forgot
like the music of my father's swearing
when a heavy hammer had hit his thumb

And like the words that my mother said
when she called us all in to go to bed

There are others another layer down
that digging alone I would never find
that someone else has to bring to mind

So I listen to stories by family and friend
till strings pop up to pull with a knot at the end

1 Reply

Your Face By Lightning

Audio Recordings / tagged Connections, Memory / August 1, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Candlelight is soft and lasting
if only as long as the wax

Lightning lit it lasts forever

For Joe

Audio Recordings, Remembering / tagged Connections, Death, Stories / July 24, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

We are still a world of stories,
symbols, dreams and music in the night - Anonymous

For Joe
who never met a listener he didn't like

For Joe
who has gone today
from teller to subject of many stories

Though no one will tell them half so well

Family reunion wrapped up. Missing Joe telling fish stories in heaven

Train to Toronto

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Bilingual, Connections, English, French, Ontario / April 8, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Bi-jovial porter
ties two cultures
with language of laughter

Mosaics

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Connections, Design, Greece / September 16, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

On Delos a floor caught our eye
with an Escher-like mosaic pattern

Optical illusions of rectangles in rows
still bright after thirty centuries

Next day in a New York airport
we take our seats in the lounge
fabric covering the chairs
in exact same pattern

For C.A. Wiles

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / tagged Connections, Death, Shakespeare / May 9, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

As I was saying to C.A. the other day

Well actually I wasn’t
but wished I would have been
If I had known he was dying any day

I would have said
You are my twice removed
and now about to be removed
connection to Buffalo Bill
where your father worked
the Wild West Show

I made note of it
in a poem
you might recall

And I would have said
I want you to know I am as proud
to have shaken your hand as his

And I would have said
You are a prince among men
and among princes

For, though Shakespeare
may not have foretold it
there may be as many
in Texas as in Denmark

I would have said all that
or met and not said it at all

And yet C.A.
if you and I should meet
some ghost-lit night

as you step down
from your ghost rider rounds
to ponder your own
sweet moon-blanched skull
as a princely poet just might do

I would say I’m sure along with you
and every poet here

Alas poor Yorick
we did not know you well
we did not know you well enough

Image of Buffalo Bill Coin by WilliPuschel

Transmittal

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Connections, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mum, Royal Family, United Nations, Winston Churchill / May 8, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

They talk about degrees of separation

With apologies to Kevin Bacon
I like to think in degrees of connection

When I helped Madeleine Albright
down from that one tricky step
it was also everyone at the UN
and anyone who was anyone
in politics and power for thirty years

President Ford was a nice man
with a football player’s hand
that had shaken more than a few

When the Queen Mother in her 90s
was our guest in the Saskatchewan Hotel
I held her hand in both of mine a little
longer than called for in the book of protocol
wanting to make sure that Churchill got through

Degrees of Separation

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Connections, Fame, Royalty / May 7, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

C.A. tells me the other day
about his genuine cowboy father
who worked Wild Bill’s “Wild West” show

And if I shake C.A.’s hand and I often do
I’m only one away from Buffalo Bill
and Sitting Bull makes two

And then there’s Black Elk and Crazy Horse
and a whole passel of Little Big Horn Sioux

And shaking the hand of the Queen Mom
and loving her lots and holding on some
I was only one away from Churchill
and every crowned head for a hundred years
and Lady Di too, don’t that bring some tears

And I also hug Greta now and then
who worked for Hammarsjold at the U.N.

Yesterday I had a rum with Eric
who lived with the Yanamami
and natives of a Southern sea

All those amazing thousands
and I still haven’t counted past three
anyone here want to shake hands with me

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Nancy Fierstien on Eyes of FriendsNovember 6, 2025
Lovin' this one, line after line!
Nancy Fierstien on Light on LeavesNovember 2, 2025
Yet another favorite of mine! How can I hold back this "THANK YOU!" ???
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!

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