Farm – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Farm

Fowl Supper

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Community, Harvest, Sharing / September 22, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Don't call it fall
even though it happens then

Because it's all
about turkey and the trimmings
and the trimmings are community

Men had the toil and the joy
of bringing in the sheaves
Women the toil and joy
of turning them into bread and pies

In Tibet and the Southwest states
sand paintings are made and blown away
nothing is permanent so they say
nobody counts how long the feelings stay

1 Reply

Why Now

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Frustration, Work / September 20, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Why Now! Dad would say
when anything at all broke
in the middle of a busy day
of farming and ranching work

Wasn't sure if he was mad
at the gods or at me (It felt like me)

No use to say that things break from use and most often when you're using them
it was a personal affront in every case
purely intended to inconvenience him

Retired and attired for an old friend's birthday party
when the phone rang to say Canceled
because of the guest of honor's sudden death

The red fire again climbing up the whites of his eyes

Pulling Pipe

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / tagged Community, Heroes, Struggle, Work / September 18, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Trouble down the well
and me, my dad and my brothers
are Texas roughnecks

pulling, spinning and stacking pipe
pipe and rod and "Careful dammit!
If you drop that rod the well is shot"

We're Red Adair, fighting a fire
we're wet and muddy and cold and made
and we've got to get it done by dark

The gold down there's not black but red
and iron rich sea hiding away
from the pulling power of the prairie sun

Looking back fifty years from a poet's perch

I pull, spin and stack
metaphor and meaining

Back then it was just men
doing what they had to do

and white-faced cattle waiting

Father Fighting the Prairie Fire

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Protection, Sacrifice, Wildfire / September 17, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

All week
he came home while we slept
and left before we woke
leaving trails of courage and smoke

He's been gone a long time this time

Our early books
had pictures and stories
of a peaceful heaven and a red hot hell

Though none of the men on the fire-line
between the two to keep the children safe

Over Their Shoulders

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Drought, Fear, Hope, Optimism, Outlook, Patterns, Preparation / September 7, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

He came of age in the twenties
Bumper crops and a big new house

She came of age in the thirties
Dust and alkali in your pie and eye

When things started to look good
he'd buy a big new shiny car

Those times are coming back

When things started looking good
she'd can a bunch more fruit

Those times might be coming back

Conspicuous Non Consumption

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Crops, Drought, Fear / September 6, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You might wonder
when you drive past a farmyard
with a million dollar combine sitting
beside a thirty thousand dollar house

You must remember what they can't forget
that the dirty thirties blew through here
and one of these days they might be back
and anything as hubris as sloth or waste
may cause the gods once again
to visit down grasshoppers, hail and dust

These gods
do not object to spending on production
or the machines that help bring in the crop
but woe to those who spend on themselves

Blind Rooster

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, String Too Short To Save / tagged Aging, Birds, Fear, Sight / September 5, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Afraid of missing daybreak
crows all night

The Useless Lake

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Birds / August 8, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

At the edge of our ranch
lay a large and useless lake

True, it was pretty enough
when the sun struck it just right

And the alkali
didn’t seem to be a problem
for the seeming millions
of cormorants, gulls and pelicans
who embraced it for their home

There were even men
living along the south shore
who may have been happy
mining its salt for money

What I meant was
it was water
that the cows couldn’t drink

1 Reply

What Turns Up

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Birds / August 7, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In the long field by the lake
turning the earth is turning up worms

Looking over your shoulder
you'd swear you were birthing gulls

1 Reply

The Story of Storks

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Birds, Birth / August 6, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The story of storks bringing babies
was a hard sell on the ranch

Along with watching others arrive in other ways
the storybook pictures of tile roofs and tall chimneys
didn't look anything much like Saskatchewan

And why such an improbable bird
carrying little nipper in a knotted cotton nappie
(although some foresight might be granted there)

When readily available about a mile away
was a lake full of pelicans better suited to the task

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Ken Christopher on Fowl SupperSeptember 22, 2024
Wonderful poem Neil
Gerri Aiudi on Dad and RoySeptember 21, 2024
great poem ... love it
Ken Christopher on Old Wives Lake MassacreSeptember 11, 2024
Yes!!!!!!
Gerri Aiudi on Old Wives Lake MassacreSeptember 11, 2024
I love this and Stone Hammers
Ken Christopher on Sitting in My Father’s DeskSeptember 2, 2024
Very good!, I liked’d the Emily Dickinson one too, powerhouse babe all from the solitude of her room. Shen you…

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