Farm – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Farm

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

Field of Vision

Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Ego / October 11, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Paranoid farmer
deep in the gold of a sunflower field
morning and evening aware
that he is being watched

Narcissist son by his side
basking in the glow

Photo by Lachlan Gowen on Unsplash

Mom, Happy Birthday

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Love, Mother / October 3, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Oh we would circle
rattling tin-wheeled trucks and trikes
and drive her crying to her bed

Gather soot enough from here and there
to keep her forever scrubbing
at our souls and skins

And worry her near to death
while she stayed up to worry us alive
from many a snow and beer-filled drive

I know she does it to this day
and I’m afraid anything else I’d say
would all be mush and love
and angels watching from above
and yet still, I think I will

Thinking of my Mom today, on what would have been her 102nd birthday.

The Crow

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Death, Guns, Hunting / September 28, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

TWO BOYS AND CROW AT FIFTY YARDS
TWO SHOTS AS ONE THE CROW FELL STILL
WE LAUGHED AND RAN
WHOSE HIT WHOSE MISS
TWO HOLES IN HEAD
AS CLOSE AS THIS
O O
THE LIFE WAS IN OUR EYES AND SKILL
TOO FAR FROM DEATH TO UNDERSTAND A KILL

Gopher Tails

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / September 27, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When I was seven
gopher tails were three cents

The county had a bounty
to arrest the little pest
not exactly a price on their heads
but you get the picture

So we hauled buckets of water
to drown them out
Learned from the bigger boys
how to tie a noose in binder twine
Placed it around the hole
and waited

Curiosity
which has been known to kill cats
is not very good for gophers either

Once caught
they were run in mad races
spun to centrifugal asphyxiation
or finished off in other cruel ways
before yielding us our hard-earned bounty

In the spring we watched their return
to the snow-speckled pasture
running tumbling wrestling
making love

And the wonderful babies
when they first ventured out
to try sunshine, grass and shaky legs

It amazes me now
that as boys we could take
such joy in their playful beauty

and in their deaths

2 Replies

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

New Hay

Farm, Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Harvest / September 9, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The scent of hay
thrown upward in the cutting

Too rich and heavy to remain aloft
falls back to lie among its fallen friends

Walk shuffling small feet through it
and it lifts again in clouds to nostrils

Breathed in sweet particles remain
I do believe … there’s some there yet

Photo by Boba Jovanovic on Unsplash

Black Beauty

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Cats / August 27, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When we moved to Grandfather’s
old farm
no one had been living there for a while
and all the cats had gone wild

We found a litter of kittens
hidden deep in a corner of the loft
and among them
the most beautiful black and white kitten

Spitting and crouching under the eaves
she scratched us all to the bone
If I’d been a tree there would
have been six rings

Much persistence and we got her out
much time and love and we tamed her
if one ever really tames a cat
Best cat ever
adopted by our cousins when we moved
and one of the things we most looked forward
to on our visits was Black Beauty and her newest of who knew how many litters

The tomcats in that town were also
excellent judges of beauty

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

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