Family – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Family

War Wounds

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged Epigenetics, Memory, PTSD, Trauma, War / November 12, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

There are, the epigenticists say
memories that haven't gone away

What happened to
your grandma when the troops came by
is still barbed-wire wrapped around your DNA

Dreams that aren't yours
neurons firing like the war's still on
and mines set off by a word or a touch

So please be gentle with one another
and your mother and your mother's mother

1 Reply

Parent and Grandparent Stories

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged Epigenetics, Generations, History, Sharing, Trauma / November 10, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

So many stories
in so many boxes tied
with so many strengths of string

Hero stories to inspire
Cautionary tales to prevent repeat
Funny stories to remind life can be

Stories with too much pain
or too much shame
for listener or for teller

Stories they didn't tell
and stories they wouldn't tell
all part of our story if we heard them or not

Image by Pixabay

Learning Love

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged Care, Child, Illness, Love, Parents / October 27, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sitting by your sick child's bed
and willing every breath till dawn
you learned what love was
and that
you would ever be a slave to it
and that's
what makes the world go round

Royalty

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Prairie, Rich Life, Wealth / October 14, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Wheat of gold
covered the hills

There were purple robes of flax
and castles
aplenty in the clouds

The kind and queen kept our lineage from us
but we only had
to look around to know

Threshing Time

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Harvest, Wheat / October 12, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I remember at Christmas getting a great threshing machine
a block of wood with wooden spools nailed to the side
but I loved it as I loved the threshing

All through the long summer days I would walk
the fields with my dog
At night my mother rubbed strong liniment on four year old
legs: growing pains she said, although one always hurt
more and didn’t seem to grow any faster

And the grain grew too, and passed me, and was higher
than I was. And then the harvest and the wonder of it falling
to the binder and the magic of the machine as it tied the
sheaves and ke-chunked them into the carrier

Then the stooking – little teepees covering the prairie again
and the golden warmth of everything

And the threshing machine; they wouldn’t let me too close;
it might eat me like it ate those sheaves and like the men
in the crew could eat, and they could eat
even when it rained

While I sat for hours nose to wet window
watching the great gray dinosaur
deep in the timeless mists

And hot clear windless days when everything sang and
the big belt slapped and the machine came to life again
and wagons were on both sides
and the big horses were standing strong and ready
and switching flies with dignity

The sun caught the arch or the long plume of straw and
the chaff lifting and the old hands fed the machine in a
sort of easy sweat-oiled rhyme and the new hands stood
on the sheaves they tried to lift each time

And the old hands laughed, and the new hands laughed
and they were men together

If Adam Was

Audio Recordings, Family / tagged Guilt, Judgement, Sin / September 30, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If Adam was
the first virgin birth
and Eve the first Caesarean

And every father deep down knows
that every time his children sin
it is due to what he did or didn’t do
how uneasy sits the crown of God

Why Now

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Frustration, Work / September 20, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Why Now! Dad would say
when anything at all broke
in the middle of a busy day
of farming and ranching work

Wasn't sure if he was mad
at the gods or at me (It felt like me)

No use to say that things break from use and most often when you're using them
it was a personal affront in every case
purely intended to inconvenience him

Retired and attired for an old friend's birthday party
when the phone rang to say Canceled
because of the guest of honor's sudden death

The red fire again climbing up the whites of his eyes

Pulling Pipe

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / tagged Community, Heroes, Struggle, Work / September 18, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Trouble down the well
and me, my dad and my brothers
are Texas roughnecks

pulling, spinning and stacking pipe
pipe and rod and "Careful dammit!
If you drop that rod the well is shot"

We're Red Adair, fighting a fire
we're wet and muddy and cold and made
and we've got to get it done by dark

The gold down there's not black but red
and iron rich sea hiding away
from the pulling power of the prairie sun

Looking back fifty years from a poet's perch

I pull, spin and stack
metaphor and meaining

Back then it was just men
doing what they had to do

and white-faced cattle waiting

Father Fighting the Prairie Fire

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Protection, Sacrifice, Wildfire / September 17, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

All week
he came home while we slept
and left before we woke
leaving trails of courage and smoke

He's been gone a long time this time

Our early books
had pictures and stories
of a peaceful heaven and a red hot hell

Though none of the men on the fire-line
between the two to keep the children safe

Fair Ball

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged Baseball, Childhood, Sport, Support / September 16, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

So what if my father
only came out once
to watch me play baseball

He was a busy man

I caught a hard line drive

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Ken Christopher on War WoundsNovember 12, 2024
So true, the barbed wire 👍🏼
Niece Karen on Quaking in the AtticOctober 23, 2024
Perfect metaphor - you captured me perfectly!
Ken Christopher on God is Getting OnOctober 22, 2024
Anger contained in love
Murray on Feels of the Farm – FlaxOctober 15, 2024
Now that's vintage knowledge Neil!!!! Hope you're feeling much better. Your poem would suggest you are!!
Ken Christopher on Fowl SupperSeptember 22, 2024
Wonderful poem Neil

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