Remembering – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Remembering

Nostalgia

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia, Remembering / tagged Gratitude / April 13, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The trick with nostalgia
is to visit
without wanting to stay

It is okay
to thank everyone you meet

Picking on the Banjo

Audio Recordings, Remembering / tagged Envy, Jealousy, Music, Talent / March 25, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When I pick on a banjo
it's like a bully pickin on you
for your lunch money

In high school I tortured a trumpet
hitting the high notes and low
with many a glancing blow

While Johnny's boy, damn his hide
could pick up any instrument

Didn't have to think or practice
or anything
the music just told him
where to put his fingers

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

Sheets to the Wind

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Chores, Laundry, Memory, Scent, Winter / March 3, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Reminded by Marymae the other day

of Monday's wash in Tuesday's wind
and bending sheets to bring them in

It was just enough starch
and thirty degrees below in March

And about how fingers got cold as hell
but I think it was really about the smell

Yes that was the part she wanted to tell
it was really the freshness of that smell

Small Town Growing Smaller and Larger

Audio Recordings, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Perspective / February 9, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Been looking at mine for quite some time
through telescope and microscope
everyone and everything not as seeemed

Could it be the changing me's that sees
Could it be the equipment that I'm using
Dad's leather-shedding slide-out spyglass
and a toy microscope left by a frugal Santa

Barn – Sunshine – Thoughts

Audio Recordings, Cows, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / February 8, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The mote and the beam
are both in my eye

Witness to sunlight's break and enter
through errors in dry boards

I have sneezed
and changed a world

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

Tabula Rasa on the Ranch

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Dogs, Solitude / February 6, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Bee thinking about
what I might have been thinking about
on those long walks, just me and the dog
and coming to the conclusion - nothing much

The dog had her nose to follow
and she older and wiser than my four or five
more likely I just followed where it took her

A covey of partridge might explode in our face
a killdeer fake hurt to mislead us from her nest
or gophers barely beat us in a race to their hole

Even though I don't remember what there was
the secret of the joy might have been what wasn't
and what there wasn't in all those acres was people

With people you had to use your wits and words
and about a hundred million ways to get it wrong

Just me and the dog it was nothing but song

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

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

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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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