Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Survival

Very Little House on the Prairie

Audio Recordings, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Changing Times, Conflict, Survival / June 24, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Out here the land is harsh and unforgiving - Connie Caldor

Yesteryear:
First years on the Saskatchewan prairie my grandparents lived in a house they built
from the packing cases that had carried their all
to keep them from fifty below and a hundred above

Yesterday:
My partner and I
went to the mats
over one degree
on the thermostat

Dia de los Muertos para Sophia

Audio Recordings, Nature / tagged Pruning, Survival / November 1, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In the ice storm last spring
Sophia was dealt such a svelte

She used to be big as a village
now a third of the village is gone

We will leave food and flowers
and a stone where the branches were

Between a Rock and Becoming One

Audio Recordings, News, Personal Growth / tagged Forgiveness, Genocide, Survival, Terror / October 2, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

A survivor of the Rwandan genocide
whose family did not escape it with him
says you become what you cannot forgive

In these days of new of worlds of woe
we can add a thousand a day to not forgive

Like that man made wise by pain
can we avoid the plaster setting firm
like him find a way to forgive and live again

1 Reply

Putting Up Preserves

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Canning, Garden, Harvest, Preserving, Survival, Vegetables / September 22, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

On the prairies thegarden is one word

While Dad and us boys are filling the bins
Mom and the girls are mustarding beans and pickling beets
filling Mason jars with a winter of good eats
then sealing them tight with red rubber rings

We are singing, it remembers like a song
A Canning time - Canning time - sing along

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

Perspective

Audio Recordings, Remembering, Travel / tagged Holocaust, Homeland, Israel, Survival / April 17, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In Israel this year
the number of Jews will reach six million

There are other Jews in other lands
but it is only here that you can stand

Put out your hands
palms up and softly cupped

Weigh each as equal
weigh each and say

“This many”

A poem written for Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2012

After the Christmas Party

Audio Recordings, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Blizzard, Prairie Life, Survival / December 23, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Anitfreeze or whisky
too much or too little you're in trouble

This is the scene that you would see
if the swirling snow would let you

A young man in an old Ford truck
heading West at three miles an hour

Driver's window open arm extended full length
Mittened hand holding twelve volt spotlight
beam groping the ridge along the graveled lane

Two feet from death on one side
ten on the other, and happy

2 Replies

Prairie Chicken

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Birds, Survival / April 5, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I came up through the valley where the homesteaders had tried to make a go of it for a few years, past the tin cans and other evidence of their short stay trying to rust itself back into the ground. Up over the crest of the hill where the Indians had lived for centuries with no more evidence than the weathered rocks of tepee rings

It was spring and I stumbled upon what they may have seen for
centuries, the mating ceremony of about twenty five or thirty grouse. They didn’t see or hear me and I stopped about ten yards away and watched (although my mother might not have thought it proper)

The hens ran around, heads down and tails up in unbashful invitation while the cocks puffed up the air bags in their chests and drummed their challenge

They looked handsome and brave in their posturing and beckoning and their readiness for reckoning and the fights were on, straight on and straight up with spurs and feathers flying

It was vicious but pure
Not a cockfight for the amusement of the bloody-minded, but a way to see that only the strongest would sire the little broods that would have to survive the hawks, and the snakes, and the weather; and all the dangers of a land where it takes a great deal of courage
– just to be a chicken

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Nancy Fierstien on Titanic America IIJanuary 28, 2025
Thanks for the disciplined stroke of the pen you used to write every line! I hope it gets some folks…
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

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