Ranch Life – Page 15 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Ranch Life

An Archaeology of Memory

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Aging, Memory / November 25, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Old cowboy in the nursing home
eyes closed
hands moving slow
bunching up and smoothing out
hills lower and higher than the albums show

Gentle that slope for the prairie wool
steepen it a little for the winter sled
push up a mountain for a boy and his dog
lope a meadow for the tall-horsed teen

Back on the ranch again
excavating in the Plasticine

Where Were You When

Audio Recordings, Farm, News, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Assassination, Death, John Kennedy / November 22, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The story of how John F. Kennedy was killed
still mixes in with the story of how I heard it

Half a sentence tugging at my greasy sleeve
as I rush from the parts store in Moose Jaw

Picking up more on CBC radio in the pickup
heading west at eighty on Highway One

The urgency of the world waiting
for more news on his condition
not greater in a time of harvest
than my father's anxiety
to get the damn thing fixed
and the crop off before it rained

The moment in time when Kennedy
succumbed to his head woulds
in a Dallas hospital
was lost in the sound of the combine

Ode to the Farmer

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Appreciation, Danger, Death, Hunger / November 9, 2023 / 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

The Farm, The Ranch and the Sweeping Scythe

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Environment, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Adversity, Beauty, Death, Hardship, Weather / November 8, 2023 / 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

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Farm and Ranch Nowadays

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / November 7, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Tractors keep getting bigger
combines and chemicals too

Ranching a hundred years
a horse a saddle and a rope

Author’s Uncle Arnold on Wallis tractor, Saskatchewan 1928

Thanks Be To Cod

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Cod Liver Oil, Health / November 6, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

We were only given
one vitamin in winter
and none in the summer

In summer we had gardens and sun
in winter the oil of the liver of fish
and we got it by big spoons full
not in Nothing going on here capsules

The children of today hardly learn
with opportunes for wisdom wasted
unable to measure how good for you
without the gauge of how bad it tasted

Storm Windows of the Soul

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Prairie Life, Winter / November 5, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Fall in Saskatchewan
and storm windows going up

Three round holes under the flap
for the Father, Son and Holy Ghost
to enter on Sunday
and the exhaust of the Maytag’s
little gas engine to exit on Monday

Nature will be held at bay
family and guests opening a door
will close it slam-ass quick behind them

It will be that way till a warm day in May
when ladders go up windows come down
and the pagan gods rush in again

News Haikus

Audio Recordings, Cows, Farm, Haiku, News, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / October 13, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Remember when news
was only some mare’s tail clouds
meaning rain was soon

Remember when news
was but the red bull pawing
meaning time to run

Remember when news
was from here to the far fence
one ranch at a time

Cousins Round the Campfire

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships / October 6, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Green twig pals by blaze
one will bend up one bend down
one will tell the town

Author age 12 with cousins Wayne and Lyle

Holding Up The Line

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Coffee, Harvest / September 23, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Barista, barista, if only you knew
what I'd like to order from you

Barista, barista
please, if you please
cold coffee in a Mason jar
like Momma sent to the fields
at harvest and at haying time

That much sugar
and that much cream
and no one wiped the lip
when they passed it round

Barista, barista
there's nothing I see
on that long fancy menu for me

I guess
I just came in to smell the coffee

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NEIL MEILI on Grocery Shopping in AustinDecember 13, 2025
Thanks Pamela, Love to see some of your haiku and you and Pamela in the new year. All blessings, Neil…
pat psooy on Saturday Night in AustinDecember 6, 2025
Kinda like that better than the shining lights of Vegas
Pamela on Grocery Shopping in AustinDecember 5, 2025
Hi Neil! And Neil is still Neil! Hoping to see you and Dorsey in the new year. My poems have…
Nancy Fierstien on Don’t Judge A House By Its CoverDecember 3, 2025
Another terse verse way to capture the way I feel about living under a blue tin roof for almost 30…
Iudita Harlan on Longing for FamilyNovember 26, 2025
Neil Lovely poem. Sending love to you and Darcy. Iudita

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