Farm – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Farm

Spring in Moose Jaw

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Saskatchewan / May 29, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In the city
retired farmers still watch
the weather

In greening front yards
wooden ducks nailed to white posts

Wings spinning backwards

Survival Groups

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Adversity, Athol Murray College of Notre Dame, Community, Pioneers, Survival, War / May 27, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Small and tight and all their might
to make sure the group survives
knowing that if it don’t they won’t

A family on a prairie farm
an army unit in a shooting war

A group of boys in a Wilcox shack
a load of coal from death by frost

No reunions like their reunions

Tabby La Rosa

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Cats, Education, Horses, Kittens, Learning / May 15, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Horses are cats
they just want to be
petted and loved

Although
when you neglect to do so
they are much more likely
to send you flying
than piss on your best Persian mat

That sort of thing is reserved for cats
and cats are not horses
and deeply resent being ridden

as every toddling two-year-old
in history (unable to read history)
will have to have etched
on the blank slates of their skin

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

Reincarnation by Cloud

Audio Recordings, Environment, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Connection, Hope, Rebirth / April 11, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Does the rain falling on us now
remember the palmed oasis
the emerald lake of the Rockies
the laughing over small stones

Hand in hand we stand
faces upward, wet with hope

Gardening in the Minefield

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Danger, Land Mines, War / April 4, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

An errant tap root
tapping a triggering device
can quickly juice a careless carrot

The force of cabbage growing
may result in coleslaw fireworks

And the blood of beets
hardly distinguishable
from that of small boys
with hoes

April 4th is International Mine Awareness Day

Hi Ho Hi Ho

Audio Recordings, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / tagged Joy, Work / March 24, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Work

I sometimes think about it, but not too hard

Like, shouldn’t there be a different word
for doing what we love or hate for money

Like how I got to drive big trucks at eighteen
that I dreamed about at eight
and they paid me

Like playing cowboy and riding the range
where the deer and the antelope play
and getting paid

Building buildings bigger than Lego
and getting paid

Maybe work is about being serious
but I seriously question that too

I mean, what can be more joyous and serious
than a child adding one last block to his tower
or me, as I write this poem and look up
to see it is 1:25 in the morning

A Stoneboat Story

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Farmboy, Hawaii, Hubris, Surfing / March 20, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Rough planks across two wood-beam runners
low and tough enough to tip a heavy rock on
or haul the cleanings of the stalls in winter

Learning to stand in loose-kneed balance
full speed behind fast homing horse
across the frozen tracks and turds
on the way back to the barn

Later off Oahu Buff teaching me to surf
I think “Just like this”
until the big wave comes and says “Not quite”

Shelter Belt

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / March 7, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The job of the trees
is to stop the snow

If they wish
to turn green
in the summer
and play with birds
no one will object

Sheets to the Wind

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Laundry / March 6, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Reminded by Marymae the other day

of Monday's wash in Tuesday's wind
and bending sheets to bring them in

It was just enough starch
and thirty degrees below in March

About how fingers got cold as hell
but I think it was really about the smell

Yes that was the part she wanted to tell
it was really the freshness of that smell

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