Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Harvest

Combining Before Cabs

Audio Recordings, Farm, Haiku, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Alcohol, Grain, Harvest / October 8, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Chaff itch down your neck
and a cold beer in your hand
great barley circle

Swathing

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Grain, Harvest, Pride, Wheat / September 25, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Turning for home at dusk
he takes a moment to look back in pride
at the last perfect swath among the perfect swaths

Lines straight as Protestant prayer
overlapping and gold as Burnhilda's braids
floating on firm stubble cut at perfect length
to allow the prairie winds to blow above below
and dry the kernels in the holding heads
to Number 1 Northern, best wheat in the world

Tonight, once more he'll fall to sleep
counting loaves of bread instead of sheep

Wheat

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Baking, Bread, Communion, Harvest, Nourishment / September 24, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

What perfect voice will sing the thruths of wheat? - Frederico Lorca

What half-ripe for chewing gum

Wheat for rolling waves in wind
Wheat for loaves and fishes giving

Wheat for shoveling wheat all day
and eating earned fresh from oven

Wheat for Jesus body sharing
with your brethren in the pews

Wheat for only rain is news

Ode to Ode to Autumn

Audio Recordings, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / tagged Autumn, Early Death, Fall, Harvest, Seasons / September 23, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Well John Keats
you nailed that one good
... to load and bless
with fruit the vines that
round the thatch-eves run

A continent away
I drive through fields
of swath-striped gold
and thing of you at 24
but two years from being
harvested while still green

New Hay

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Harvest, Scent / August 18, 2026 / 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 feet through it
and it lifts again in clouds to nostrils

Breathed in sweet particles remain
I do believe ... there's some there yet

Ode to the Farmer

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Accidents, Danger, Death, Harvest, Nourishment, Work / August 17, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

No one will be surprised by the report
that farming is a very dangerous sport

What flappig 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 a dusty tear
and many a "who's next" fear

Year after year after year

And yet deep in the soils of time
the seeds of 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

Wheat

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Bread, Communion, Grain, Harvest, Nourishment, Prairie / November 15, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

What perfect voice will sing the truths of wheat?
- Frederico Lorca

Wheat half-ripe for chewing gum

Wheat for rolling waves in wind
Wheat for loaves and fishes giving

Wheat for shovelling wheat all day
and eating earned fresh from oven

Wheat for Jesus body sharing
and your bretheren in the pews

Wheat for only rain is news

Image by minka2507 from Pixabay

Swathing

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Harvest, Nourishment, Pride, Satisfaction, Wheat, Work / November 14, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Turning for home at dusk
he takes a moment to look back in pride
at the last perfect swath among perfect swaths

Lines straight as Protestant prayer
overlapping and gold as Brunhilda's braids
floating on firm stubble cut at perfect length
to allow the prairie winds to blow above below
and dry the kernals in the holding heads
to Number 1 Northern, best wheat in the world

Tonight once more he'll fall asleep
counting loaves of bread instead of sheep

How the Tractor Engine

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Harvest, Wheat / October 13, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

How the tractor engine sings
in a different key when the sun goes down

Like the stooking gets a little easier
when you've had a few pulls on the water bag

Things you wouldn't notice driving by
fast enough to see us still-life in the field

Threshing Time

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Harvest, Wheat / October 12, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I remember at Christmas getting a great threshing machine
a block of wood with wooden spools nailed to the side
but I loved it as I loved the threshing

All through the long summer days I would walk
the fields with my dog
At night my mother rubbed strong liniment on four year old
legs: growing pains she said, although one always hurt
more and didn’t seem to grow any faster

And the grain grew too, and passed me, and was higher
than I was. And then the harvest and the wonder of it falling
to the binder and the magic of the machine as it tied the
sheaves and ke-chunked them into the carrier

Then the stooking – little teepees covering the prairie again
and the golden warmth of everything

And the threshing machine; they wouldn’t let me too close;
it might eat me like it ate those sheaves and like the men
in the crew could eat, and they could eat
even when it rained

While I sat for hours nose to wet window
watching the great gray dinosaur
deep in the timeless mists

And hot clear windless days when everything sang and
the big belt slapped and the machine came to life again
and wagons were on both sides
and the big horses were standing strong and ready
and switching flies with dignity

The sun caught the arch or the long plume of straw and
the chaff lifting and the old hands fed the machine in a
sort of easy sweat-oiled rhyme and the new hands stood
on the sheaves they tried to lift each time

And the old hands laughed, and the new hands laughed
and they were men together

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