January 2024 – Page 2 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Monthly Archives: January 2024

Hermits Notwithstanding

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Connection, Heartbreak / January 20, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Hermits notwithstanding
we are linkage craving critters

No matter how burned our tentacle tips
we cool them a while and reach out again

Clay print entitled “Play” by Marion Nicoll

2 Replies

Hermit Envy

Audio Recordings, Relationships / tagged Loneliness, Separation, Solitude / January 19, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The thing about being alone
is finding someone to lie to
about how good it feels

1 Reply

Not Sleeping Alone

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / tagged Books, Company, Literature, Loneliness, Separation / January 18, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When she is away
half the bed is covered in books

There are seven there now
not counting notebooks filled with
baby poems demanding 2am feedings

Bly's Flying Poetry to Dante's Paradiso
great bodies of work and much beloved
But happy enough to trade the space
for the warmer body of my beloved

1 Reply

The Lonely Men

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Bachelors, Hardship, Pioneers, Saskatchewan, Settlers, Solitude / January 17, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Their little dark houses still dotted the prairie when I was growing up

They all seemed to cling to he soil as if their life force had all been used up in the long and difficult transplanting, and they could hang on but no longer grow
Or they stood alone surrounded by sadness and the small and smaller markers of what had fallen to the reaper's scythe

Their roots, loosened year after year
by the hot winds and the deep frosts became more and more brittle

Until one by one they broke off like tumbleweeds and were gone

1 Reply

BACHELOR BOB

Audio Recordings / tagged Hibernation, Neighbors, Recluse, Seclusion / January 16, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You Can Bank On It

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Seasons, Winter / January 15, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Through a hole fingernailed
in the fern forested glass
you can see the white forever
and know that winter owns the world

Spring has but a short term note
and summer a revolving credit line
that is doomed to fall due in due course

Winter in the Barn

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Cats, Horses, Memory / January 14, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Steam rises off the backs of big horses

The old Holstein in the second stall
shifts her weight from side to side
matching the rhythm of the milking
and flicks her tail at memories
of summer flies

Across the width of the barn
I stand with mouth open
in my biggest five-year-old oval
catching most of the milk
squirted dead-eye straight
by the laughing hired man

In the tack room
kittens wait by a tin plate
to put their morning moustache on

In my memory it is always warm in the barn

Technology

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Horses / January 13, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The day breathed in and the day breathed out

After lunch my father took a nap - the horses had to rest

by supper time they were fed and brushed and thanked

And then the tractors came - and tractors do not nap

Not content with that small theft they soon grew lights and stole the dark

He fed them gas, they pulled the plow

But not once, one to the other
did they ever speak of love

Great Uncle Tony and Uncle Werner at seeding time – a long time ago

Information Highway Road Rage

Audio Recordings / tagged Anger, interruption, Technology / January 12, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I have a new blue phone
if it was not new and blue
I know what I would do
when I get the next span text

Already, even friendly fire
makes a deep-threat sonar bleep
that kicks my head to red alert
with don't-ignore adrenal spurt

A pillow to cover might work fine
but that one came from yours not mine

Mail Got You

Audio Recordings / tagged History, Modern Life, Overwhelm, Spam, Technology / January 11, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If every email was real mail
delivered to your door each day
there would be paper hell to pay

Imagine slogging your way through
the snow white banks and blizzards
all the way to the street and every street the same

No-one rubbing even two dry sticks together
lest a great conflagration should tear across the city
like Tokyo in the firebombing
(another war crime that didn't count - the winners did it)

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Ken Christopher on Buddy TrainingFebruary 19, 2025
Yep, tough love
Kimberly Heinrich on Dog YearsFebruary 18, 2025
You could not possibly have known that today was the day that I had to have my beloved dog euthanized.…
Barbara Joy Bruce on FebruaryFebruary 13, 2025
love it! Thanks, Neil!
Ken Christopher on Ancestry . BarnFebruary 7, 2025
You bet; nice one Neil
Barb on Her Mother Sings to VioletsFebruary 2, 2025
💜💓💜

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