Cowboy Poetry – Page 2 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Cowboy Poetry

Good Guy Bad Guy

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry / tagged Corruption, Integrity, Perception, Reform, Villain, Virtue / February 26, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Cowboy rides in
with his white had on to clean up the town

Cleaning up a town can be dirty work
and his hat's getting blacker and blacker

Not long now
till they ride him out of town on a rail

My Uncle Shot My Dog

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Death, Dogs, Forgiveness, Loyalty / December 1, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My uncle shot my dog

My ever loving ever loyal saved me from the coyotes
Went back to the ranch to lead my parents to me
stuck in the mud - just like in the movies - Lassie dog

My uncle shot my dog

Maybe she had took to bitin’ people
if she did I’m sure they had it coming

Maybe she’d got to eatin’ the chickens
if she did she’d earned every one

Maybe she was old and sick and hurtin’
maybe she was better off dead than alive

I don’t remember anyone saying that
but I doubt it would’ve helped
Not when it’s your best friend - and you’re five

My uncle shot my dog

My uncle shot my dog
and went to his grave unforgiven
Maybe I can get it done before I go to mine

Roundup

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Branding, Work / July 9, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

It's about the hardest dustiest best work a man can get

The pride of the heeling rope, thrown snake quick fro a good horse and the slow steady pull, dragging the white face out where the boys with the hot irons can record the feat

Three hundred cows sing of calves lost and found, and above and through it all the full strong laugh of one of the boys where a slip was made or a kick well placed

At the end of the day, you wrap a rope sore hand around a spring cold beer, and lean back against the old pole fence deep in the pain, and the sweat, and the moment

Completely released from the wheel of desire
There's no place you'd rather be
There's no one you'd rather be with
and you're too damned tired to move anyway

Cowboys Will Be Boys

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / April 30, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

How funny is it
to be kicked by a cow
(at least compared to a horse)

Depends a lot
if it happens to you
or to your tightest friend

(By tight I mean
both close and liquored up)

Just one of those jokes
that girls don’t seem to get
not even in the calving pen

At least I’ve never seen
them doing their damndest
to get the one with broken ribs
to laugh so they can see them cry

1 Reply

The Old Dry Guy and the Bath

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / March 4, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The old timers were all settin around the general store
I think they'd been there forever, or a few days more
hocking up gossip, and spit and an occasional snore

And as it's always been, in the west or the east
the one who knew the most; said the least
He had a face like old harness and one bad eye
to myself I called him 'the old dry guy'

Late January one year the old boys were a buzz
old Jeb had got scalded and burned off some fuzz
He'd been bathing in his kitchen in the old tin tub
and reached across for the kettle to warm up the rub
slipping he'd spilt it and lost some skin and some hair
and the boys were all speculating' how much and where

They'd talked it around for three hours or more
when the old dry guy moved in his chair by the door

They all got real quiet and leaned closer to hear

He said: "Serves the damn fool right, takin a bath this time of year"

3 Replies

Too Crowded

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Family, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Migration / November 6, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My folks took some time off in the sixties from their Saskatchewan ranching and traveled down through South Texas
One day they stopped to talk to an old cowboy sittin and a wittlin on a rickety ranch porch
When he found out where they were from he said "Say - do you know a man up there by the name of Bill Prior?"
They said "Yes - he's an old bachelor who lives up past our north pasture, ,why do you ask?"
"Well" he said, "about 1928 Bill and I are out lookin for some strays when we see another rider coming over the furthest hill"

Bill says to me "It's getting too damn crowded down here, I'm heading for Canada"
"He turned his horse North and I haven't seen him since"

2 Replies

Motherin’ Up

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Coping, Grief / September 14, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sometimes you lose a cow
sometimes you lose a calf
You wrap the orphan
in the dead calf's skin
and the mother takes her in
like kin
Gold enough there for a country song
It's a hurtin song - you can sing along
About true love died and true love gone
and foolin yourself just long enough
to keep on keeping on

How I Lost My Faith – In Preachers

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Ranch Life / April 10, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

It was a cold and muddy Sunday
Our little caravan of Christians
children, parents and student minister
stuck in the spring mud a mile from church

Me and city cousin Wayne
the chosen ones at age seven
chosen to walk
to the nearest neighbour
while the others wait in the cars

The neighbour's not home but his Cocksuhtt 40 tractor is

Some combination of farm boy bravado
and reluctance to slog
back to the cars in defeat
comes out as "I can drive a tractor!"

One foot each on the clutch and a good deal of grinding
gets us into low gear
and off at about two miles per

The student mi sister meats us
two thirds of the way back

As our leader
in all things spiritual and practical
he decrees that we are going far too slow
and selects another gear
(probably at random, he's from the city too)

The one he picks is the fastest
known in these parts as "Road Gear"
and we quickly accelerate to thirty

which causes the preacher to panic
(or remember that he forgot his bible)
and leap off

leaving us to wrestle the big red monster
now wildly careening from rut to rut
and rocketing toward the mired cars
and fearful families

Wrenching the wheel to the right
at the last possible moment
we narrowly avoid death and destruction
and stall to a stop in the water-filled ditch
amidst the prayers of the congregation

Henry Moore

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Art, sculpture / December 8, 2021 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Henry Moore was a smart old cowboy
a smart old cowboy was he

Just as sly as a fox
be bought twenty-foot salt blocks
and set them out in West Texas in winter

Where a thousand strong tongues
changed those basic hard foods
into a bunch of reclining nudes

There are times when it bothers
my conscience to see
them hangin’ around London,
New York, and D.C.

Then I remember old Hank is one of the boys
just suckerin’ some dudes with these toys

So I decide not to chip off the bronze

Winner at the Great Salt Lick Contest, Baker City Oregon
https://whitdeschner.com/salt-lick-gallery/

1 Reply

Cowversations

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / December 5, 2021 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

One of the reasons I got out of ranching
was the long drought of good conversation

Cowhands
true to their fame are men of few words

Horses ain’t bad
they will at least point their ears and pretend

But cows, it was the cows that did it
how they’d saucer eye like listening
while you chewed them out in detail
about all the dumb things that they’d done

Turn away to ruminate upon the lesson
and two days later kick you for no reason

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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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