Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Adversity

The Farm, The Ranch and the Sweeping Scythe

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Environment, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Adversity, Beauty, Death, Hardship, Weather / November 8, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sunrise can be brilly bright
and all day long
everything out to get you

The horse can kick or fall
the bull has horns of steel

Every machine is grinding its teeth
in wait for a chance to bite

and every snowstorm
eager to find you
too far from the barn
and stiffen you like the manure-pile cat

The sunsets worth surviving for

1 Reply

Poet Laureate at Ninety Five

Audio Recordings, Poems about Poetry / tagged Adversity, Aging, Art & Artists, Education, Resilience / August 12, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The new poet laureate is ninety five
he’s been working on his demons
for a long long time

Six weeks before the poet was born
his father burns his demons out
by drinking carbolic acid in the park

Mother burns father’s pictures
forbids mention of his name

Young Stanley finds one in the attic
and asks about the man

She tears the picture to shreds
without a word, and slaps him hard
six decades later he still felt the sting

Bright boy gets scholarship to Harvard
Okay but forget about teaching classes
these were not the days when a Jewish boy
could teach their ivy league asses

Marries a poet, moves to honeymoon farm
she disappears, never to be heard from again

The new poet laureate has had plenty of pain
each day he wakes as a poet, not a man of ninety five
still seeing everything new – still glad to be alive

Stanley Kunitz, Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Teacher and Gardener (July 1905 – May 2006)

Setting a Good Example

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Adversity, Crops, Faith, Waiting / July 30, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The farmer prays for rain
and goes right back to work

He seeds the seeds
and he weeds the weeds
and oats his horse if he has one

But as summer goes by he may scan the sky
with the boils and the patience of Job
and mutter, as Job might have muttered
while trying to set a good example for God

Survival Groups

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Adversity, Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, Community, Pioneers, Survival, War / May 27, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Small and tight and all their might
to make sure the group survives
knowing that if it don’t they won’t

A family on a prairie farm
an army unit in a shooting war

A group of boys in a Wilcox shack
a load of coal from death by frost

No reunions like their reunions

Pere Loved the Greeks

Audio Recordings, Remembering / tagged Adversity, Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, Education, Hunger, Philosophy / May 22, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

All day
we sit with the great men of Athens
learn about the birth of reason
and how reason learned to fly

At night return
to the cold, hungry, shacks of our Sparta
each with a wolf gnawing under his cloak
too proud to cry out if we die

Prairie Song

Audio Recordings / tagged Adversity, Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, Hope, Inspiration, Saskatchewan, School, Tenacity / May 19, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

A link to the 1980 film The Hounds of Notre Dame – a glimpse of life at Notre Dame College in the 1940s and the extraordinary man who created it. Author also a former student.

Marhesha’s Dream

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth, Relationships / tagged Adversity, Dreams, Humor, Learning / May 11, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

She opens a door
into a huge domed stadium filled with men
women and children, in costumes of all the ages
She knows that they are all there for her
to set up any drama at any time
to learn any lesson she needs to learn

She closes the door
and walks down the corridor

Another door to a storage closet
Inside big barrels labeled
"Plot Thickner"

Hope

Audio Recordings, Personal Growth / tagged Adversity, Hope, Optimism, Struggle, Tenacity / April 18, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

World hard and harder
walls and paths build
stone by stone
in the cracks - flowers

Fear piled on pain
stone paths merge
with rock wall rise
in the cracks - flowers

Hard days and hard nights
path of pain joins wall of fear
in the cracks - flowers

Blooming Anyway

Audio Recordings, Haiku, Relationships / tagged Adversity, Art & Artists, Separation, Tenacity / March 14, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Stone walls do not a prison make - Richard Lovelace

Though we be apart
memory roots yet connect
and bloom in our art

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Nancy Fierstien on Redwoods in the RainFebruary 27, 2025
Love, love, love, love, love this one Neil!
Neil on Dog YearsFebruary 22, 2025
Thanks Kim, Sometimes the poems seem to know. Sorry for your loss, Neil
Ken Christopher on Buddy TrainingFebruary 19, 2025
Yep, tough love
Kimberly Heinrich on Dog YearsFebruary 18, 2025
You could not possibly have known that today was the day that I had to have my beloved dog euthanized.…
Barbara Joy Bruce on FebruaryFebruary 13, 2025
love it! Thanks, Neil!

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