Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Survival

Survival Groups

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Adversity, Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, Community, Pioneers, Survival, War / May 27, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Small and tight and all their might
to make sure the group survives
knowing that if it don’t they won’t

A family on a prairie farm
an army unit in a shooting war

A group of boys in a Wilcox shack
a load of coal from death by frost

No reunions like their reunions

Perspective

Audio Recordings, Remembering, Travel / tagged Holocaust, Homeland, Israel, Survival / April 17, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In Israel this year
the number of Jews will reach six million

There are other Jews in other lands
but it is only here that you can stand

Put out your hands
palms up and softly cupped

Weigh each as equal
weigh each and say

“This many”

A poem written for Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2012

After the Christmas Party

Audio Recordings, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Blizzard, Prairie Life, Survival / December 23, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Anitfreeze or whisky
too much or too little you're in trouble

This is the scene that you would see
if the swirling snow would let you

A young man in an old Ford truck
heading West at three miles an hour

Driver's window open arm extended full length
Mittened hand holding twelve volt spotlight
beam groping the ridge along the graveled lane

Two feet from death on one side
ten on the other, and happy

2 Replies

Prairie Chicken

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Birds, Survival / April 5, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I came up through the valley where the homesteaders had tried to make a go of it for a few years, past the tin cans and other evidence of their short stay trying to rust itself back into the ground. Up over the crest of the hill where the Indians had lived for centuries with no more evidence than the weathered rocks of tepee rings

It was spring and I stumbled upon what they may have seen for
centuries, the mating ceremony of about twenty five or thirty grouse. They didn’t see or hear me and I stopped about ten yards away and watched (although my mother might not have thought it proper)

The hens ran around, heads down and tails up in unbashful invitation while the cocks puffed up the air bags in their chests and drummed their challenge

They looked handsome and brave in their posturing and beckoning and their readiness for reckoning and the fights were on, straight on and straight up with spurs and feathers flying

It was vicious but pure
Not a cockfight for the amusement of the bloody-minded, but a way to see that only the strongest would sire the little broods that would have to survive the hawks, and the snakes, and the weather; and all the dangers of a land where it takes a great deal of courage
– just to be a chicken

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Sandi Hebley on The Man in the Desert RemembersJuly 21, 2026
Wow!
JM on The Man in the Desert RemembersJuly 21, 2026
This one really hit home Thank you
Judy Migel on TearsJuly 20, 2026
Dorsey is right. It is even more beautiful to hear the words in your voice and all the emotion in…
Eda Lishman on Lost at SeaJuly 16, 2026
Oh, Neil: This reflection sure hits the times we are a-living. Each day and night those of us who are…
Sandi Hebley on Eagle Bone WhistleJuly 6, 2026
Beautiful!!

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