Family – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Family

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

Christmas Cards

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Christmas, Holiday, Traditions / December 25, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Back when mail was mail
and jam came in a pail
(with strawberries big as your thumb)
the thing I most remember
are the envelopes of December

It didn't surprise us
that Santa came by sleigh
anybody to get to our ranch
would have had to come by sleigh

so they came by card instead
and helped us light each clip-on candle
around the popcorned tree

1 Reply

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

Can’t Take the Farm Out of the Boy

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / December 19, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

What I learned
of poetry from my father

is that the tractor sings
and just this RPM

Author and his dad on Oliver 88 tractor

For You

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships / tagged Comfort, Grief, Support / December 13, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

As long as you read this poem
I will be writing it.
Alden Nowlan - An Exchange of Gifts

Deep down I hope you know
I wrote this poem for you
even though you might have had
a different name and face and place

There was a man in the Southwest
who lived with widows in a serial way
and sometimes made them mothers again

The children have reunions
and tell stories and have a name for him
they call him "The Comforter"

Stranger Connections

Audio Recordings, Family, Personal Growth, Relationships / tagged Compassion, Love, Wisdom / November 28, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The small round Rinpoche at Esalen
was teaching Tibetan compassion

Start from where you are he said
feel the love you feel for one or two
or the people nearest dearest to you

Holding that feeling indiluted
add one more and then one more
til you start to feel the feeling fade
then pull back in til you feel it again

Sit with this today all day
and tomorrow try to add another
and if that works then add another
til every man becomes your brother

How Thorough Was Thoreau

Audio Recordings, Family, Poems about Poetry / tagged Food, Hermit, Poet, Recluse, Support, Walden / November 20, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Meditating on pond and sky
is better with donuts and pie

Delivered no doubt silently
by mom and sis each Sunday

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

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Gail on In-TuitionJanuary 2, 2025
Love it! “The cost of this is only in the not.”
Ken Christopher on Missing the MysteryDecember 30, 2024
Yes, the Mystery is what keeps it exciting
Ken Christopher on Christmas CardsDecember 29, 2024
Yep, the sleigh got us to town on train day and me to school every day, the poem is a…
Anonymous on Why Children Are ChristmasDecember 23, 2024
So simple, so captivating! Nice Neil to give me the feel :) Murray A
Ken Christopher on John DeereDecember 21, 2024
Love it❤️

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