Ranch Life – Page 25 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Ranch Life

Pulling Pipe

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / July 21, 2022 / 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 mad
and we've got to get it done by dark

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

Looking back fifty years from a poet's perch
I pull, spin and stack
metaphor and meaning
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 / July 20, 2022 / 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, Ranch Life / tagged Expectations, Fear, Hope / July 19, 2022 / 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 you pie and eye

When things started looking 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

Farm Dog

Audio Recordings, Family, Ranch Life / tagged Death, Dogs, Love, Loyalty / July 17, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

1 Reply

The Austrian Uncles

Audio Recordings, Family, Ranch Life, Remembering / July 15, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Already old when I was young
revered as I would hope to be when old
Two brothers married to two sisters of my father's father
Great aunts
always as they've always been
busily bustling 'round the house

While the uncles somehow stay
both present and out of the way

Little china cups in work-hard hands
black coffee and home brew
sipping the day away

Growing Stones

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / July 10, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Each spring on our farm
the old father sun turned up his warmth and
charm
melting the frost deep in the heart of the mother
earth

The
egg babies
thereby created
rose to the surface
to play in the open air
mischievous miscreants all
waiting to jamb diskers and drills
and if they get a little grain to hide in
ambush swathers, combines, and oil pans of
grain trucks

so we had to gather them into
school bus stone boats and wagons and haul
them off to places where they could be with their
older brothers and sisters on the reform school
rock pile

there is still some hope
that someday they can learn to be pillars of the
community

Blue Spruce

Audio Recordings, Family, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Birds, Childhood, Play / July 9, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

It may have been about thirty feet tall
taller when you're small

And on the very top would sit
the great horned owl
If the anti-Christ were to have a Christmas tree
he could have capped it as the perfect dark angel
We cowered by the corner of the house
our very blood frozen pretty to his predator eyes
Yet when he flew away
we could snap - as only children can
from fear to play
run to divide the branches and return once more to the soft-needled floor
One little two little three little Indians in our magic tepee in a land of long ago and not so far away

1 Reply

Blue-Eyed Boy

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Dog, Freedom, Joy / July 8, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Blue-eyed boy blasts off from breakfast
like a quail on a rail
Collie dog leaps on board
and they're off across the prairies
barely touching the tops of hills
Sun gives warmth or cloud gives shade
all depending on his whim
birds and rocks and swaying grass
everything living embraces him
Burrs don't stick and thorns don't prick
even fences joining in the play
happily turn their barbs away
Floating along on the wings of four
won't be long till they slam that door

2 Replies

Memories of Three or Four

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Childhood / July 7, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I remember being nestled
in that old dance kitchen
deep in the warmth of washday Monday
The Maytag's liquid sounds mixing
with the gentle driving chugs
of the little gas engine
Sloshing and chugging sloshing and chugging
as I curled up beside it
in the great pile of laundry
rich with the smells of the people I loved
Half asleep half awake I floated there
all my senses safely cradles and warmed
and part of a rhythm and a sound
like a heartbeat in a womb

Homesteaders’ Cabins

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Pioneers, Prairie, Settlers / July 6, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Homesteaders' cabins
ghosts of courage and hope
wind through their ribs

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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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