Family – Page 13 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Family

Farm Dog

Audio Recordings, Family, Ranch Life / tagged Death, Dogs, Love, Loyalty / July 17, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

1 Reply

One for the Aunties

Audio Recordings, Family / tagged Pioneers / July 16, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Who midwifed my father into the world in a packing crate shack in 1912
And washed up and went home
without mentioning the blessed event to the government (and no one else did either)
Forty years later
he applies for a passport and finds that he doesn't exist
Until they swear on their memory
and bring him into the world again

The Austrian Uncles

Audio Recordings, Family, Ranch Life, Remembering / July 15, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Already old when I was young
revered as I would hope to be when old
Two brothers married to two sisters of my father's father
Great aunts
always as they've always been
busily bustling 'round the house

While the uncles somehow stay
both present and out of the way

Little china cups in work-hard hands
black coffee and home brew
sipping the day away

They Had Some Cows

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Travel / July 14, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The Cherhill Chalk Horse

Grandpa and Hilda and the Snake

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships, Travel / tagged Fate / July 13, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In Brazil our grandfather at about twelve
quick precise and fresh from Switzerland
leaps up and kills a venomous snake
just as it is set to strike a four year old girl
In awe and gratitude she says
I'm going to marry you when I grow up
He moves to far-away Canada
marries, has seven children, wife dies young
raises children, sells the farm, retires to Brazil
She was still there - you can guess the rest

1 Reply

Grandma Brander

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Games / July 12, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Mother would sometimes stop our play and send us to visit her mother in that little white house
She may have had grand stories to tell, about her childhood in England and Ontario and her brother lost at sea, and our grandfather whom we'd never met
What was he like - Were we like him - Would we want to be
It was a leap we never took, and spent afternoons in leaps more comfortable to us all - small coloured marbles over small coloured marbles in the inscrutability of Chinese Checkers

Learning From Grandparents

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged grandparents / July 11, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

From my Swiss grandfather
who dreamed and grew a prairie Eden
combining Europe and Hy-Brasil
I learned the impossible is possible

From my English grandmother
I learned that niceness is very nice
but you can leave feeling empty
except for cookies and milk

From my father's mother
and mother's father
I learned that early death
is a form of theft

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brasil_(mythical_island)

Blue Spruce

Audio Recordings, Family, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Birds, Childhood, Play / July 9, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

It may have been about thirty feet tall
taller when you're small

And on the very top would sit
the great horned owl
If the anti-Christ were to have a Christmas tree
he could have capped it as the perfect dark angel
We cowered by the corner of the house
our very blood frozen pretty to his predator eyes
Yet when he flew away
we could snap - as only children can
from fear to play
run to divide the branches and return once more to the soft-needled floor
One little two little three little Indians in our magic tepee in a land of long ago and not so far away

1 Reply

Memories of Three or Four

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Childhood / July 7, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I remember being nestled
in that old dance kitchen
deep in the warmth of washday Monday
The Maytag's liquid sounds mixing
with the gentle driving chugs
of the little gas engine
Sloshing and chugging sloshing and chugging
as I curled up beside it
in the great pile of laundry
rich with the smells of the people I loved
Half asleep half awake I floated there
all my senses safely cradles and warmed
and part of a rhythm and a sound
like a heartbeat in a womb

Unity Sight

Audio Recordings, Family, Personal Growth, Relationships / tagged First Nations, Native Americans, Peace, Perspective / June 23, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Poem inspired by a conversation with the artist Al Manybears

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Ken Christopher on ShitstormApril 4, 2025
My former comment had an error, should have read: Great poem Neil, has some slippery elements that mix it up…
Kenneth on Walden PondApril 3, 2025
Siblants interlapping with interference waves construct this delightful hologram of spring: well done my friend
Ken Christopher on Minutia in MarchApril 1, 2025
21 beats, 4 past hyku, (sp); perhaps a new form. Beautiful poem
Ken Christopher on Father’s PoemMarch 29, 2025
Lovely‼️
Ken on MossbankMarch 23, 2025
Beautiful, that could go on a t-shirt

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