Cowboy Poetry – Page 4 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Cowboy Poetry

Lifebuoy

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Family, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / April 25, 2020 / 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.

Old School

Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Family, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Education / March 3, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Uncle Emil, a good man
through and through, knew school

Not from being there
but from watching those who had

Four years of university
and he still can’t milk a cow

The Cowboys The Pilots and Poets

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / February 28, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

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

For the pilots have an 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

Memories that Stick #8 Flypaper in the Kitchen

Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Ranch Life / February 22, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Farms have flies
and choose who dies
and children learn it young

Ancient kings
put heads on pikes
to warn of upstarts fate

but didn’t have to listen to
the buzzing while they ate

Cowboy Chivalry

Cowboy Poetry, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Smoking / January 14, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The gallantry
to thumbnail strike the match
and cup the hands to shade the wind
to light the damsel’s cigarette

The courage
to kiss that breath

At The Broken Spoke

Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Haiku, Ranch Life, String Too Short To Save / tagged Austin / January 3, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Good advice from Tex
you can’t two-step in stirrups
leave the work at home

Rustlin’ Aint All About Cows

Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Nature, Travel / tagged Autumn / November 10, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Down by the Blanco as the fall dances start Sycamore trees in the Texas breeze rustle their skirts round their knobbly knees

Buffalo Chips

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Manure, Ranch Life / November 6, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Lily pads floating
on the sea of prairie grass

Heat for the tepees
or the homesteaders 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

Baling Love

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Manure, Ranch Life / October 13, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When it’s over 90 in July alfalfa gets dry
and blows into the knotter
and the knots won’t stay tied
So you ride on the bouncing back
where each ke-chunk of the plunger
blows chaff in your eye as you search for
loose ends of twine that you finally find
and tie into a new knot, with love, or not

Then you pile them in piles of five
to keep the wet weather at bay
and you pile them any which way
or you pile them with love and pride
pile them right like Frank Lloyd Wright

Hurried by a wind blowing in from Alaska
You handle that same bale again in the fall
tossing it up on the wagon, kneeing it with
bloody knees through thistle-torn jeans, or
an overhand flip with a three-tined fork and
the grace and precision of a pole vault champ

Fourth time you see that bale
you unload that wagon and make a stack
while chaff turns your collar to sandpaper
And you can do it so when you stand back
you can see every bale fits without a crack

Fifth time you see that bale
it’s winter and maybe forty below
prying frozen cubes out of that stack
where the cattle are waiting, with steam
rising from hot breath and fresh manure
and you carefully cut each Ariadne thread
so not even Theseus could follow it back
through their labyrinth of seven stomachs

Next time you see it is in late spring
when four feet of crap in the calf shed has
melted to the bottom and you’re in and out
with the front end loader and the ammonia
clearing a whole winter from your sinuses

And then off to the fields to spread it out and
complete the circle, trying to stay up wind
and as old Bob used to say, “keeping your
mouth open to keep your face clean”

All that to feed your family, and the world
all that with love, or not

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

2 Replies

Ode to the Farmer

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Ranch Life / October 12, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

No one will be surprised by the report
that farming is a very dangerous sport

What flapping empty-fingered gloves
point back to momentary lapses
What limbs with what power
have been taken off
by power take-offs

What tendons snapped like glass
and bones cut clean as grass
by unthinking mowers

And what of those neighbours
dead and true
who for a minute forgetting
what they knew
through red machines
combined with their grain
All these have earned his dusty tear
and many a “who’s next” fear

Year after year after year after year

And yet deep in the soils of time
the seeds of his goodness
are growing
while the world
turns in slow seasons

And he will be ready
when at last they declare
a true war on poverty
and are willing to bomb
with wheat

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Evie shafner on MagdaleneApril 6, 2026
Beautiful
Sandi Hebley on Another for the CatApril 1, 2026
🤣🤣🤣
Eda Lishman on How I Lost My Faith – In PreachersMarch 3, 2026
An epic moment for seven year olds! Wow how many lessons can you have in one incident? And a few…
Nancy Fierstien on A Tear for the RichFebruary 23, 2026
Another gem worth it's weight in gold from you, Neil Meili!
Sandi Hebley on Lonely LightFebruary 12, 2026
How sweet!

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