Flight – Page 4 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Flight

November Eight Triple One Golf

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Travel / tagged Airplane, Grand Canyon, Plane / August 25, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

May you all be blessed
by a friend such as this

A friend that will forgive
full flaps at full speed

and a mercy stop in an alfalfa field
at the cost of a belly scrape

A friend that will take you
the length of the canyon grand
west to east in the sunset’s glow
below the rim and the radar’s paint

And never whisper a word

Author’s Aero Commander 680E,
Deer Valley Airport, Phoenix, AZ

Sharing a Bed with Richard Bach

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots, Relationships, Travel / August 22, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

“When you believe in something as true as the sky,”
he said, “you’re bound to find a few friends.”
- Richard Bach, “The Gift of Wings”
Pilots have been known
to sleep under a wing

though not ungrateful
when a friend takes them in

Our common friend was Jim

When I flew into Phoenix
I always stayed with him
and Richard did the same

even if not at the same time

Jim Higgins, North of Phoenix in his WWI replica SE5A

Tennessee Ernie Ford Gives Again

Flight, Nostalgia, Pilots, Relationships / tagged Babies / March 2, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Carolyn at two and three
making more noise than a B17
would only settle down to sleep
to Tennessee Ernie singing hymns

A story that touched him deep
as he pinned on my CAF wings
under one at the Phoenix airshow — Image by Vincent Ciro from Pixabay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zqwjtDsdp0

CAF = Commemorative Air Force
(formerly known as the Confederate Air Force)

Headwind

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots / February 26, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Heading west for stampede city
doing two miles a minute through air
with a Chinook pouring over the mountains
and a rising feeling that you’ll never get there

You’re going slower and slower
over the rough wind-swept ground
and you don’t want to land in that field
and of course, you don’t dare turn around

The needle and your knees
are all three on empty, knocking
and if you had a car, you’d pull over
get out the old can, and start walking

But you’ve made it, you land, and you park
and you know there’s someone you’ve got to thank
when the boys put thirty two gallons
in a thirty two gallon tank

Image by flo51vogt from Pixabay

The Barnstormer and the Boy

Flight, Nostalgia, Pilots, Relationships, Remembering / February 24, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In the little plane, just the pilot and me
up up up into the prairie air

Climbing and gliding and floating free
high above the county fair

The town looked small from way up there
but hell… it looked small from anywhere

It was the changing people into ants
that I loved the best and wanted again

Being on the wrong side of relative bigness
had been causing me a lot of pain

Photo by Martin Adams on Unsplash

Seoul Sunsets

Flight, Haiku, Nature, String Too Short To Save, Travel / tagged Korea / September 4, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Watercolor sky
boats islands and water too
sunset landing Seoul

Image by Paul KIm from Pixabay

Wouldn’t It Be Nice

Audio Recordings, Flight, Pilots / August 23, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

wouldnt it be nice
Wouldn’t it be nice
if you went out with your instructor one morning
and the blue foothills sky was full of white puff ball clouds

And you smiled at each other
and began to play in and out of their magic
of shadows and light

And it felt as much lighter than air
as air is lighter than earth

And the hour took moments and forever
and the silence and awe followed you back
and he wouldn’t even take your money for the ride

Now I know it’s not legal to fly in clouds like that
so I’m not exactly saying that it happened
but wouldn’t it be nice

Image by k-images from Pixabay

Climbout Sunsets

Audio Recordings, Flight / May 26, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

John Gillespie Magee
slipped the surly bonds of earth
reached out and touched the face of God

Planes are bigger and faster now
I in my Aero Commander
commander of the air

Climbing at dusk have set the sun
on the lip of the world
and held it there

Have rode the Concorde
faster than the speed of sound
and faster than the earth goes round
that can lift it up where it went down

And there are times I’d best the lark
to try to hold or yet turn back
baby’s smiles and love’s first spark

I think Magee, the reverence would see
as we all fight the dying of the light
and try to touch the Sistine finger
a little longer before night

1 Reply

Flying the Concorde

Flight, Pilots, Travel / May 21, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I am not immune to the desire
to wind the stem of old time back
and with as much success as most

Except when the Concorde flew the sky
and I, pilot to pilot in the cockpit stood
and watched the earth reverse for me
on a flight from London to DC

What have I done you ask
with the slice of time I stole

Saved it in a bank of cloud
above the ocean eight miles up
where I can go if I ever wish
to write a check for a smile or a kiss

Oregon in Winter

Flight, Nature, Travel / February 12, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The big plane slows, mists rise to meet it
droplets begin to play along the windows

My body, mostly water
falling through clouds, mostly water

I have been traveling some

The water in me comes from
the limestone caverns of Austin
the rivers of Upstate New York, and
million year old glaciers in the Rockies of Alberta

The clouds have been around the world
rising and falling as river, air and sea

Quiet now, as I am
I can feel them meeting again
hear them, telling stories

3 Replies

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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
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

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