In honor of National Aviation Day and all the author’s friends in the sky
Deer Valley Airport
Tag Archives: Pilots
POETS PILOTS AND COWBOYS
POETS PILOTS AND COWBOYS
A poet will try to dissect the world
and he’ll try to show you each part
and he’ll write it all down with a pen
that he’s dipped in an old carin’ heart
While pilots have the eyes of a hawk
and a strut in the way that they walk
and they give all that’s in them to give
and they live every moment they live
And most cowboys are gentle not loud
and they’re not all that good in a crowd
and they talk like they’re about half asleep
but what they know boys and girls
they know deep
WORD DIVISIONS
WORD DIVISIONS
You can know your native language
and still feel all alone
as pilots talk to pilots
in a code that’s all their own
Yet not even one to one
can they share that love of air
or touch the other’s feelings
of the fear and beauty there
Sailors talk to sailors
of wind and sail and rope
of nights upon the ocean
of courage and of hope
Yet the words just can’t convey
their love of sea and air
nor touch the other’s feelings
of the fear and beauty there
And though cowboys talk to cowboys
in a special kind of drawl
there’s still a space between them
the words can’t tell at all
Not those nights of cold and stars
with coyotes on the air
nor the call of open spaces
with the fear and beauty there
Watch as lovers talk to lovers
in ways only two can share
as they build between them
a framework light and fair
While a web that’s spun of maybes
hangs so fragile in the air
that one false word can shatter
into pain, the beauty there
And yet
There are still some crazy poets
out riding hatless in the sun
still trying to do the very thing
we all know can’t be done
Still Quixoting for a language
that can speak to everyone
GRAND CANYON
GRAND CANYON
Eight triple one Gulf, this is seventy eight Tango Sierra
how would you like to drop in to Grand Canyon airport?
We were flying Calgary-Phoenix; he, Phoenix-Sun Valley
a friend had just lost an engine. He needed to land
and wanted a ride to Phoenix.
I didn’t know the runway but I followed him in
It’s not a very long runway, and at the end
are some pretty big trees.
I was low and slow in the old Twin Commander
the one with the geared engines
The ones you always had to handle oh so gentle
like your throttles were a handful of eggs
So I played the game and brought in the power easy
Too slow and you eat the trees
too fast and you eat the pistons, and the trees
And it was a mighty pretty runway
when you were standing on the ground
On the way back from Phoenix
It was late afternoon and we were lured
by the siren beauty of the Grand Canyon.
Right turn diversion, West to East as slow as we could go
Just below the rim the whole length of it
watching the magic colors as the sun
behind us lit up the canyon walls
Almost out of fuel we finally pulled ourselves away and
turned north to find a runway.
The wind was from the west and we had to land into the
blinding light of the sun just before it went down.
It was as if it had turned on us, this light that had made us
feel so alive, (although we had really turned on it) and was
about to kill us now because we didn’t have enough fuel to
go around and we had to face it
straight on.
With two pilot passengers looking out the side windows and
calling out heights and directions, and a little luck we got
down. And we felt good again, very good.
Always the turnings, always the changing, always the other
side of the coin. So many times in that part
of my life it seemed that the beauty and the
pleasure were but a thin membrane away
from the fear and the danger.
The Cowboys The Pilots and Poets
Neil Meili, Zen Cowboy Poet, Photo ©Carolyn Meili
THE COWBOYS THE PILOTS AND POETS
The Cowboys, the Pilots and Poets
The girls they say love them all
For the pilots have an air of the danger
of those who can die if they fall
While a poet’s crushed-petal scent
reflect all their beauty and pain
And a cowboy has a feel of the open
and a smell we won’t speak of again
Maybe the pilots help them feel
life’s edge of purest blue
While the poets act as mirrors
to depths they never knew
And the cowboys oh the cowboys
can touch them where it hurts
And they’ve got those fast
snap button shirts