Remembering – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Remembering

Circling Back

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Remembering / June 27, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

All those long days of youth
before I was a poet
lived but not noted

I go back now
guided by bend grass
and broken branches

Attaching
toe tags of meaning
to departed days and friends

Arm’s Length

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry, Remembering / tagged Distance, Observation, Perspective / June 24, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If I went back
to the old town again
I might
have to leave
again to write about it

Mossbank, Saskatchewan, circa 2025

Sweet Memories

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Denial, Diabetes / June 22, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My mother's mother
lost a leg in the sugar wars

We dragged our butts across town to see her
she dragged hers across the hosue to serve us

You would think that each visit
might have served as a caution

But, as young minds
may twist and stay twisted

I took away instead
an infinite ability to ignore the obvious

and a taste for milk and ginger cookies

Grandma Brander

Audio Recordings, Family, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Games / June 21, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Mother would sometimes stop our play and send us to visit her mother in that little white house

She may have had grand stories to tell, about her childhood in England and Ontario and her brother lost at sea, and our grandfather whom we'd never met

What was he like - were we like him - Would we want to be

It was a leap we never took, and spent afternoons in leaps more comfortable to us all - small colourd marbles over small coloured marbles in the inscrutability of Chinese Checkers

Small Town Grade Seven

Audio Recordings, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Death, Heartbreak, Small Town / June 20, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In a town of six or seven hundred
you get a cross section of the country

One classmate's father's suicide
with shotgun splattered walls

One boy my age, drowned
in an upturned truck in a muddy ditch

One with leukaemia, white as the snow

One redhead, Leslie French, as beautiful and mysterious as the language

One blonde, Shirley Long, to long for

She's only interested in grade 9 boys

One bruised heart

Not yet hard enough to be broken

Mossbank Mostly Moss

Audio Recordings, Family, Remembering / tagged Small Town / June 19, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Mossbank, Saskatchewan, circa 1955

Bit of Wisdom

Audio Recordings, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Aging, Control, Rebellion, Small Town, Youth / June 17, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Old man still tight
on the reins of his years
- Ted Kooser

In youth
he got the bit in his teeth a few times

Still trying to forget what the neighbors won't

Always rides with a tight rein now
chafing hard on a dentured mouth

Scars to Keep You Young

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth, Remembering / tagged Healing, Wounds / May 14, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Fondly fingering
hatchet lines
from cutting kindling
how soft the flesh as seven

Thumb tenderly touches
fingernail and nail reshaped
by the baseball diamond grinder
and I am easy-limbed and ten again

As for those
that do not mark the flesh
in hand each visit... flowers fresh

Blue-Eyed Boy

Audio Recordings, Environment, Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Companionship, Dogs, Freedom, Play, Prairie / May 9, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Blue-eyed boy
blasts off from breakfast
like a quail on a rail

Collie dog leaps on board
and they’re off across the prairie
barely touching the tops of hills

Sun gives warmth or cloud gives shade
all depending on his whim
birds and rocks and swaying grass
everything living embraces him

Burrs don’t stick and thorns don’t prick
even fences, joining in the play
happily turn their barbs away

Floating along on the wings of four
not long now till they slam that door

Author, about age 4, on the Saskatchewan ranch

Remembering When

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Joy, Presence / May 8, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Remembering when
anything was everything
full presence childhood

Author, about 3 years-old, on a trike on the ranch

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Thanks for sharing this one, my friend. It packs a good punch, line after line. I'll be glad to give…
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That’s pretty funny, and fun to read
Nancy Fierstien on Spring Came InMay 12, 2025
You've certainly captured these crazy times with finesse and grace, my Friend!
Nancy Fierstien on Remembering WhenMay 8, 2025
I'm betting "slow motion" was never your style!

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