Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Lifebuoy

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia / October 4, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I never have learned to swear very well
which just goes to show that training will tell

That there is much to be said for good homes
and payoffs for stern discipline and hope

It's not that I don't know the words
but they all still taste like soap

Buffalo Chips

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Manure, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Childhood, Play / October 3, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Lily pads floating
on the sea of prairie grass

Heat for the tepees
or the homesteader's cabin

Nothing wasted in the West

And every boy knew
that a good sharp stick or a pointy-toed shoe
would let you know
if one was just right, or still a little too new

And I'm here to tell you, that compared to a good dry chip
meeting a West wind's invitation
a Frisbee is a weak and poor, plastic imitation

Conversations with Horses

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Horses / October 2, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I never had a horse that talked to me
like Mr. Ed on sixties TV

If I had I might have learned a lot

I did talk to them of course
but mostly by knee and rein and spur
and sometimes thank you for a job well done

As for messages to me, I can only imagine
- or count the number of times bucked off

Smells of the Corrals

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Manure, Ranch Life / tagged Horses / October 1, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Horses don’t smell like cows
except when your nose is full
of acrid smoke at branding time

Disinfectant
from the pail for sloshing on the bag
after their prairie oysters are shucked
and later them oysters on the open fire

Burning
from the wire-saw freeing the ingrown horn

Dung flung
and dung hung on boots and belt and butt
from the calf that beat you at ‘who throws who’

1 Reply

Prairie Labyrinth

Audio Recordings, Farm / tagged First Nations, Indigenous Peoples, Native Americans / September 29, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Back
on the old
Saskatchewan ranch

If there are still places
that the plow
hasn't turned over

How long a
and how quietly
would I have to walk
round the tepee circles

to be invited, if ever, inside

Old Barn Leaning

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Remembering / September 28, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Still standing by the grace
of planks to the east
wind to the west

and a world in every
dust mote memory

Memory Lanes

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia / tagged Memory, Work / September 27, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Once again in summer
where prairie blacktop ribbons
over Saskatchewan’s slow rolling hills
past grazing cow and half grown grain

driving on the road I helped to build
back when I was eighteen teen
five hundred years and yesterday ago
hauling asphalt to the spreader
in a truck hot, dirty, and mean
and eating steak for breakfast
with men of tar and grit

still with a smile
each time I pass
a road crew at their work

the odor, odious
to you and almost all
as sweet to me as youth
and lilac in the wind

Highway 2 from Moose Jaw to Mossbank
Photo by author, September 2022

Gravel Lane

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Travel / September 26, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You turn off the main road
head east over the little rise
down the long slope to the buildings

Crushed rock, crushed again
talking back to your tires

as eloquent as Demosthenes
spitting pebbles by the sea

On ranch-house porch
half a mile away
sight blocked by
trees and hedge

she knows which truck
who’s driving
and what kind of
day you’re having

Saskatchewan Highway 39

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Notre Dame / September 25, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If you attended Notre Dame College in Wilcox
and you hitchhiked down that highway
you knew the 39 was for the miles from Moose Jaw

That it ran another 130 miles south to the US border
was of no great important, we weren't going that way

Hugh Carr

Audio Recordings, Remembering / tagged Baseball, Notre Dame, Teacher / September 24, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Hugh Carr had a curve
thrown with an arm half a foot longer than mine
an arm made of rubber mixed with muscle and eyes

That curve would come at you
about three feet high and outside
and as slow as a grade nine getting out of bed

About the time you put your bat down
and got ready to walk to first
it would snap off and break
across the plate

When Hugh Carr taught school
and the second last boy in the very last row in the corner
turned to talk to the very last boy in the very last row in the corner
that long rubber arm would reach back
pick up a chalk brush from the board
and in one graceful flowing motion
bounce it off the head of the boy
turning around in the back

Hugh Carr had a curve - but this was a fastball

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Lifebuoy
Buffalo Chips
Conversations with Horses
Smells of the Corrals
Prairie Labyrinth

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