Cowboy Poetry – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Cowboy Poetry

Poets, Pilots & Cowboys

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Flight, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / July 24, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

A poet will try to dissect the world
and he'll try to show you each part
and he'll write it all down with a pen
that he's dipped in an old carin' heart

While pilots hae the eyes of a hawk
and a strut in the way that they walk
and they give all that's in them to give
and they live every moment they live

And most cowboys are gentle not loud
and they're not all that good in a crowd
and they talk like they're about half asleep
but what they know boys and girls
they know deep

The Cowboys The Pilots and Poets

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Relationships / July 23, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The Cowboys the Pilots and Poets
The girls they say love them all

For the pilots have and air of the danger
of those who can die if they fall

While a poet's crushed - petal scent
reflects all their beauty and pain

And a cowboy has a feel of the open
and a smell we won't speak of again

Maybe the pilots help them feel
life's edge of purest blue

While the poets act as mirrors
to depths they never knew

And the cowboys oh the cowboys
can touch them where it hurts

And they've got those fast
snap button shirts

Don’t Worry Mate

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Humor / June 26, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Ancestry . Barn

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Art & Artists, Horses, Poetry & Storytelling / February 7, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Every poet of
childhood on a farm
will keep coming back

Every dust mote from the
straw and hay filled with DNA
and stories they are charged to tell

Red walls and black roof
and click of cow and clydesdale hoof
and every caution that their father taught
no amount of city money could have bought

Hail and drought can wipe crops out
but not barn memories whispering for a shout

1 Reply

John Deere

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Personal Growth, Ranch Life / tagged Humor, Tractor, Vibrations / December 21, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

After a poetry reading down in Texas
a couple of smart successful executive types who seemed to like what they came to hear are buying me a long necked beer

While searching for a common thread that between us there might be
we discovered that it's none other than a John Deere model 'D'

So we talk about the good old days
all growing up and farming wheat
and that old slow two cylinder's whump whump heartbeat

All marveling and remembering how you could stand on one all day
and still be fresh and ready to go out all night and play

We agreed at the time we weren't sure why
although I think I've got if figured now
and because of the kind of a guy I am
I'll gladly tell you now

You see

A little while back I run across a group
advertising a marvelous breakthrough
a mind improvement program teaching something completely new

If you give them a few hundred dollars
and about the best part of a year
they will take you from Beta to Alpha
relaxed as any guru and wise as any seer

So I buy all of their expensive gear
put those tiny speakers in each ear
and darned if I don't hear

The sound of an old John Deere

1 Reply

Back to Calgary

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / December 5, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Went back to Calgary
the home of the Stampede

Shook out my old lasso
and caught nine poems with a Houlihan throw

Would have liked to catch some more
but them doggies sometimes hide in dreams
and won't come out by keeping score

Threshing Time

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Harvest, Wheat / October 12, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I remember at Christmas getting a great threshing machine
a block of wood with wooden spools nailed to the side
but I loved it as I loved the threshing

All through the long summer days I would walk
the fields with my dog
At night my mother rubbed strong liniment on four year old
legs: growing pains she said, although one always hurt
more and didn’t seem to grow any faster

And the grain grew too, and passed me, and was higher
than I was. And then the harvest and the wonder of it falling
to the binder and the magic of the machine as it tied the
sheaves and ke-chunked them into the carrier

Then the stooking – little teepees covering the prairie again
and the golden warmth of everything

And the threshing machine; they wouldn’t let me too close;
it might eat me like it ate those sheaves and like the men
in the crew could eat, and they could eat
even when it rained

While I sat for hours nose to wet window
watching the great gray dinosaur
deep in the timeless mists

And hot clear windless days when everything sang and
the big belt slapped and the machine came to life again
and wagons were on both sides
and the big horses were standing strong and ready
and switching flies with dignity

The sun caught the arch or the long plume of straw and
the chaff lifting and the old hands fed the machine in a
sort of easy sweat-oiled rhyme and the new hands stood
on the sheaves they tried to lift each time

And the old hands laughed, and the new hands laughed
and they were men together

Turtle Boots

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry / tagged Humor / June 10, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I bought a pair of boots one time
made from an old sea turtle’s hide
The prettiest boots you ever saw
but a little bit tight along the side

I figured it would only take a while
to break these babies in just right
and in the meantime at least I’d have
the pleasure of taking them off at night

Now a hundred years don’t seem long
to an old sea turtle, or his next of kin
but it appeared it was gonna take that long
to break those miserable damn boots in

I tried everything to ease that constant pain
I soaked ‘em, I oiled ‘em, I bent ‘em, I boiled ‘em
If anyone had suggestions, no matter how wild
I got out those boots and sure enough tried ‘em

But those son of a guns just continued to pinch
I couldn’t get them to move 1/16th of an inch
wild thoughts of destruction started filling my day
but the boots were too pretty I’d just give them away

I gave them to my younger brother first
by logic his feet should be smaller you see
but after a month or so he gave them back and said he just couldn’t accept all that charity

So I gave them away to friend after friend
but I guess gratitude ain’t what it used to be
the results were always the same in the end
I got those turtle boots back, but I mostly lost
the friend

and every time I got them back
I’d put them on and wear them a while
and never could figure how one pair of boots
could cause so much pain
and still have so much style

But I gave them at last to a chiropractor
down in Texas
and I didn’t get ‘em back
so I expect he’s got ‘em beat

because if he can’t adjust those boots
he can always adjust his feet

Hawaii Five Oh Oh

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry / tagged Hawaii, Horses, Humiliation, Pride, Shame / June 4, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

So beautiful
It could be an ad for anything

A young man and a beautiful young woman
gallop along a deserted white-sand Oahu beach

They wouldn’t include in the thirty second ad
how hard the cowboy from Canada is trying to impress the island maid

How many acres - how many broncs broken

She had given him her 16 hand Hunter to ride
and they’d left the silly English saddles behind

How good he feels about himself as the sand kicks up from hooves
how pride goeth before a rogue wave crashing at their feet
and the horse spooking
and the cowboy’s doing everything right for a quarter horse
and wrong for this one who goes left while he goes right

Nothing but gravity between him and his butt on the hard wet sand
The visible bruise lasts a week or two
Lifetime of therapists working on the shame

Cowboy Poetry

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / March 22, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

This is not the poetry of pulling calves
in a cold wind and a foot or so of spring snow
with only a vest and a bottle of rye
to keep you dry

This
is the poetry
of that calf that would have died
standing on shaky legs
to drink warm milk
from the cow that would have died

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Sandi Hebley on How Fallen AngelsAugust 17, 2025
Indeed!
Nancy Fierstien on Unremember ThatAugust 16, 2025
Gonna be inclined to share this one at my Poets' Tea reading tomorrow afternoon. Thanks, Neil!
Sandi Hebley on Memory Lane JoggingAugust 5, 2025
Lovely!
Sandi Hebley on Dad and Death at WarAugust 4, 2025
😢
Sandi Hebley on One for the AuntiesAugust 3, 2025
Wow!

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