Family – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Family

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"

Stranger Connections

Audio Recordings, Family, Personal Growth, Relationships / tagged Compassion, Love, Wisdom / November 28, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The small round Rinpoche at Esalen
was teaching Tibetan compassion

Start from where you are he said
feel the love you feel for one or two
or the people nearest dearest to you

Holding that feeling indiluted
add one more and then one more
til you start to feel the feeling fade
then pull back in til you feel it again

Sit with this today all day
and tomorrow try to add another
and if that works then add another
til every man becomes your brother

How Thorough Was Thoreau

Audio Recordings, Family, Poems about Poetry / tagged Food, Hermit, Poet, Recluse, Support, Walden / November 20, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Meditating on pond and sky
is better with donuts and pie

Delivered no doubt silently
by mom and sis each Sunday

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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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