Cowboy Poetry – Page 5 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Cowboy Poetry

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

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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

Kenny and Me

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Beer, Harvest, Youth / September 10, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Ranching at Eighteen
Together we were young
and strong and very bold
and together we could drink
more beer than we could hold

We could drive home late and fast
singing every Johnny Horton song
Then fall asleep for minutes
and still answer the morning gong

We would work it out in the hot hot sun
(so easy then did the poisons yield)
As we sweated bales with pitch forks
and passed gas
in a thousand acre field

Good Advice

Cowboy Poetry, Ranch Life, Relationships / September 5, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Whenever anything got broke or lost
Kim’s mother would always say:
Don’t cry over anything that can’t cry over you

Which is a good thing to remember
when your life becomes a country song
and your dog, and your wife
and your truck are gone

Your dog will miss you right away
and cry with the coyotes all the night
your wife will miss you later – maybe
and cry for all the coulda’s that might

but you’re sadly mistaken
if you think that old C-10 Chevy
following the repo truck down the lane
is going to miss you half as much as you miss it

Photo by Heather Mount on Unsplash

Old Barn Leaning

Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Ranch Life, Uncategorized / August 22, 2019 / 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

Image by Joan Greenman from Pixabay

Dad and Saint Peter

Cowboy Poetry, Relationships / tagged Death, Friendship / August 18, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I'm not here for the harps Just direct me to the party where all my old friends gather now

Poets, Pilots & Cowboys

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Pilots, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / August 17, 2019 / 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 have 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

Cowboys & Ranchers

Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / August 16, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Cowboys and Ranchers
Cowboys may love their horses
but it’s the ranchers love the cows

The cowboys know it’s their job
to keep them critters safe
and pay and found depends
on their not coming to bad ends

But you won’t catch a cowboy
with a soft light in his eye
counting again by one and ten
every head in the holding pen

And ranchers ain’t so likely
when the summer flies are high
and the herd a scattered mess
to wish them all in a warmer place
than the sun-baked August West — The term “Pay and Found” is an old ranch expression which refers to pay, room and board

Looking forward to connecting with the poets, musicians, cowboys and ranchers at the Stony Plain Cowboy Gathering this weekend in Stony Plain Alberta. If you are in the neighbourhood stop on by!

For more information check out https://stonyplaincowboygathering.com

Too Crowded

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Ranch Life, Travel / August 13, 2019 / 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 said to me, “It’s gettin too damn crowded
down here, I’m heading for Canada”

“He turned his horse North and I haven’t
seen him since”

1 Reply

Roundup

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Cowboy / July 27, 2019 / 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 from 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 damn tired to move anyway

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