Cows – Page 7 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Cows

All They Survey

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / June 23, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My father
would stand for hours
just looking at his cows

Like God leaning
on a rail fence in heaven
pleased with his creation

Photo by Nadine on Unsplash

1 Reply

Fourteen Hours in the Saddle

Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / May 7, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The Farm, The Ranch and the Sweeping Scythe

Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Environment, Farm, Manure, Nature, Ranch Life / May 6, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sunrise can be brilly bright
and all day long
everything out to get you

The horse can kick or fall
the bull has horns of steel

Every machine is grinding its teeth
in wait for a chance to bite

and every snowstorm
eager to find you
too far from the barn
and stiffen you like the manure-pile cat

The sunsets worth surviving for

1 Reply

The Farm, The Ranch and the Need for God

Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Family, Farm, Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / May 5, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Who pray to when the rains don’t come
who forget to thank when they do

Who curse when the John Deere breaks
and the cow jumps over the moon
(by the moon of course I mean
the fence to the alfalfa field)

Who in the long nights pondering
under stars too cold to be suns
a word big enough for big — Needlepoint picture of “The Old Home Place” by the author’s dad, Walter Meili
which he created as part of rehabilitation following his stroke

1 Reply

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

Red Cattle Haiku

Cattle, Cows, Farm, Haiku, Ranch Life / January 6, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Dad loved red cattle
counting sheep though soft and white
would keep him from sleep

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Dreams of My Father

Cattle, Cows, Family / tagged Illness / November 14, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Six weeks you lay in that coma
what dreams you had
I never asked, you never said

The telling of dreams
was not a morning ritual in our home

If in grade two
I had been asked of yours
I’d most likely have said
More cows and a better horse

1 Reply

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

Modern Medicine it Ain’t

Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / October 21, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

10 cc’s of Carnation milk

Inject it just beneath the skin
pink eye cured in a Hereford calf

Old wives remedies you say
maybe that’s how they got that way

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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