Family – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Family

In Grandpa’s Cellar

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Memory, Power, Scent / March 4, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Along the east wall a row
of large glass betteries
charged and recharged
by the windmill in the yard

Close by the many crocks
of the fruits of his garden
on their way to wine

I have been brought to halt
by a passing waft
of strong cheese and pipe tobacco

But never once or likely
the musky mix of ozone
and yeast at the bottom of those stairs

I’m Ready For My New Hip Now

Audio Recordings, Family, Personal Growth / tagged Conflict, Gratitude, Healing, Perspective / February 21, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I think I have finally forgiven
My old hip for all those years of pain

My mother for her hesitation
to carry me in a time of war

My father for the crossings
between the baler and the shed
and between his will and mine

And have taken also
the first small steps toward gratitude
for how far all three have carried me

Wisdom Ism

Audio Recordings, Family, Personal Growth / tagged Aging, Learning / February 20, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If your parents didn't give you smart
don't lose heart

Just eat your spinach
and peel your eyes
there may still be time for wise

Ancestry . Barn

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Art & Artists, Horses, Poetry & Storytelling / February 7, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Every poet of
childhood on a farm
will keep coming back

Every dust mote from the
straw and hay filled with DNA
and stories they are charged to tell

Red walls and black roof
and click of cow and clydesdale hoof
and every caution that their father taught
no amount of city money could have bought

Hail and drought can wipe crops out
but not barn memories whispering for a shout

1 Reply

Her Mother Sings to Violets

Audio Recordings, Family, Nature, Relationships / tagged Motherhood, Music, Nurturing, Pregnancy / February 2, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Her mother sings to violets and they bloom
like her daughter that she sang to
and will sing to her budding daughter too
The garden going on

1 Reply

How Many Pins on the Head of an Angel

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Christmas, Connection / December 26, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Twenty after midnight and up alone
sharing every Christmas past
with the angel of Austin present
alight on the well lit tree

Telling her of the first thin pine
strung with popcorn and candles clipped
back on the ranch before the power

Every crackle of every log
every crinkle of tissue torn
every child's first Christmas
and every parent's last
and every cousin and uncle and aunt
no longer as they say extant

Praying her to spread
her wings and wonder wide
that we may gather them all by dawn

Christmas Cards

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Christmas, Holiday, Traditions / December 25, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Back when mail was mail
and jam came in a pail
(with strawberries big as your thumb)
the thing I most remember
are the envelopes of December

It didn't surprise us
that Santa came by sleigh
anybody to get to our ranch
would have had to come by sleigh

so they came by card instead
and helped us light each clip-on candle
around the popcorned tree

1 Reply

Tastes of Childhood

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Aging, Christmas, Experience, imagination, Literature, Traditions / December 24, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When I was two or three
and my mother read to me

When Alice fell down the rabbit hole
I fell down the rabbit hole
tumbling over and over in the air
the memory is still there

Ribbon candy and real candles on the tree

Christmas chocolates made at home
from a factory recipe someone
slipped to someone on a train

Taste buds still budding
tasting with my whole body

Slowly I've forgotten how
only love and fear can do it now

Can’t Take the Farm Out of the Boy

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / December 19, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

What I learned
of poetry from my father

is that the tractor sings
and just this RPM

Author and his dad on Oliver 88 tractor

For You

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged Comfort, Grief, Support / December 13, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

As long as you read this poem
I will be writing it.
Alden Nowlan - An Exchange of Gifts

Deep down I hope you know
I wrote this poem for you
even though you might have had
a different name and face and place

There was a man in the Southwest
who lived with widows in a serial way
and sometimes made them mothers again

The children have reunions
and tell stories and have a name for him
they call him "The Comforter"

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Ken on MossbankMarch 23, 2025
Beautiful, that could go on a t-shirt
Nancy Fierstien on TroubledMarch 18, 2025
Keep writing, Neil. Keep writing and writing and writing…because you have so much tucked inside that is worth saying to…
Ken Christopher on Negative Space in New York CityMarch 17, 2025
Prairie boy in NYC
Anonymous on Cowboys Will Be BoysMarch 6, 2025
I love this poem make more like it
Nancy Fierstien on Redwoods in the RainFebruary 27, 2025
Love, love, love, love, love this one Neil!

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