The Sound of

One

Cowhand Clapping

Copyright 2003

A. Neil Meili

For my mother

and her window on the world

CONTENTS

COWBOY POETRY

WHAT A BOY LOOKS UP TO

THE CROCUS

SHEETS TO THE WIND

HOME MADE ICE CREAM

STONE HAMMERS

EYES OF FRIENDS

LIFEBUOY

GRANDFATHER’S PIPE

UFO

DEGRESS OF SEPARATION

UNCLE ERNEST

AWAY FROM THE BUILDINGS

MOM

MOTHER’S POEM

JOHN DEERE

BUD McKAGUE

PINCHER CREEK

KENDRA

THE MARLBORO MAN

DON’T WORRY

REKINDLED

A PRAIRIE VILLANELLE

COWBOY POETRY

This is not the poetry of pulling calves

in a cold wind and a foot or so of spring snow

with only a vest and a bottle of rye

to keep you dry

This

is the poetry

of the calf that would have died

standing

on shaky legs

to drink warm milk

from the cow that would have died

WHAT A BOY LOOKS UP TO

Del Dube; thin cowhand in the rafters

helping dad to build the shed

Torn jeans and old bent boots

too full of holes for walking

but good enough to ride

Stepping light

from beam to beam

held up by air and cowboy pride

and a young boy’s adoration

THE CROCUS

Loud crows and bright robins

promise an early spring

But they are of the sky

and can be easily fooled

Only the crocus

knows

SHEETS TO THE WIND

Reminded by Marymae the other day

of Monday’s wash in Tuesday’s wind

and bending sheets to bring them in

It was about just enough starch

and thirty degrees below in March

And 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

HOME MADE ICE CREAM

When I was five we lived on a ranch

still forty miles and five years

away from electric power

We only got to eat ice cream

when hail lay deep enough on the ground

to be scooped into the old hand mixer

Many a hot evening in August and July

five of us sat on those hard ranch steps

looking out at the Western sky

Watching the black clouds and the grey

building and rolling our way

Silently praying our protestant hail Marys

four for and dad against

STONE HAMMERS

In my house

two stone hammers

picked from the ancient land

where Cree and Blackfoot fought and died

Beside the deep ruts of the Red River carts

showing yet through a hundred years of grass

Mounted police on the Fort Walsh trail

to stop the whisky and move the rail

Stony silent bookends now

with many more stories to tell

than the pages they hold between them

EYES OF FRIENDS

While out pursuing life’s dim ends

we often meet the eyes of friends

It’s great to feel that magnet’s pull

the hearts becoming warm and full

There may be time to stop and stare

and many years of love and care

Or maybe silent and by chance

just a brief brief moments glance

It doesn’t really matter much

the contacts made we feel the touch

Though if we ask of hows and whys

and what’s the magic of those eyes

They do what mirrors can’t quite do

they let you see right through to you

LIFEBUOY

I never have learned to swear very well

which just goes to show

that training will tell

That there is much to be said for good homes

and payoffs for stern discipline and hope

It’s not that I don’t know the words

but they all still taste like soap

GRANDFATHER’S PIPE

Long after he had died

I used to smoke my grandfather’s pipe

Not really one of his old pipes

but a knobby meerschaum that I bought

probably because it reminded me of him

the sweetness of his tobacco and his being

At least it reminds me of them now

Or was it him smoking it and me

THE DAY I SAW THE UFO

I’m sitting

with my back against the tractor tire

eating lunch in the long field by the lake

It flies over

directly South to North

plenty high and far from humanly fast

I rise with a smile

brush the crumbs from my jeans

set my eyes on the furrow

and let out the clutch

DEGREES OF SEPARATION

C.A. tells me the other day

about his genuine cowboy father

who worked Wild Bill’s “Wild West” show

And if I shake C.A.’s hand I often do

I’m only one away from Buffalo Bill

and Sitting Bull makes two

And then there’s Black Elk and Crazy Horse

and a whole passel of Little Big Horn Sioux

And shaking the hand of the Queen Mom

and loving her lots and holding on some

I was only one away from Churchill

and every crowned head for a hundred years

and Lady Di too, don’t that bring some tears

And I also hug Greta now and then

who worked for Hammarsjold at the U.N.

Yesterday I had a rum with Eric

who lived with the Yanamami

and natives of a Southern sea

All those amazing thousands

and I still haven’t counted past three

anyone here want to shake hands with me

UNCLE ERNEST

(1914-1944)

If Uncle Ernie

had not gone off to war before I was four

If he had not loved movies, or sat

in that seat in that theatre when on leave

Where the bomb came through the roof

and through the floor

and killed a few

and then blew up more

He’d have been here handsome and bright

helping my father with the ranchers load

and telling stories to my delight

Marrying and making me

cousins in the night

Next page has image of Meili Lake

Named in Memory of

Ernest Otto Meili

AWAY FROM THE BUILDINGS

To the North is the ranchland

a soft cloth crumpled

To the South ironed

flat and stretched tight

to the treeless shores of the legend lake

And there is a difference in the day

when you stay in the flatlands

or go up into the hills

MOM – HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Oh we would circle

rattling in wheeled trucks and trikes

and drive her crying to her bed

Gather soot enough from here and there

to keep for forever scrubbing

at our souls and skins

And worry her near to her 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 sill, I think I will

MOTHER’S POEM

The kitchen has always been the center

of the universe of any farm or ranch

She feeds their sleepy forms in morning

clothes them for the cold or warm

and prays them safe from harm

Looks out her window to the East

where barn shadows and rolling hills

greet them as they start their day

Men in firm direction to their work

children scattering to play

Then South across the lake to catch

the water’s mood foretelling wind or calm

Sometimes

sees in morning

mirages of cut banks rising

like mountains along the Eastern shore

Or more directly to the South

forms of her old neighbors homes

rising and shimmering

like memories of her youth

Seasons spiral out and in from this center

crocus and buttercups in the greening grass

cactus flowers and the joy of new born calves

The growing season of the grain

and golden glory of a well stoked field

The shortening of days into winter

and the ever present stars

joined by the dance

of Northern

lights

Within each season she has watched

the play of seasons of each day

men return from roundup

children from their play

While she waits always at the center

to warm and love and feed

and safely tuck away

JOHN DEERE

After a poetry reading down in Texas

a couple of smart successful executive types

who seemed to like what they came to hear

are buying me a long necked beer

While searching for a common thread

that between us there might be

we discover that it’s none other

than a John Deere model ‘D’

So we talk about the good old days

all growing up and farming wheat

and that old slow two cylinder’s

whump whump heartbeat

All marveling and remembering how

you could stand on one all day

and still be fresh and ready

to go out all night and play

We agreed at the time we weren’t sure why

although I think I’ve got it figured now

and because of the kind of a guy I am

I’ll gladly tell you how

You see

A little while back I run across a group

advertising a marvelous breakthrough

a mind improvement program

teaching something completely new

If you give them a few hundred dollars

and about the best part of a year

they will take you from Beta to Alpha

relaxed as any guru and wise as any seer

So I buy all their expensive gear

put those tiny speakers in each ear

and darned if I don’t hear

The sound of an old

John Deere

BUD McKAGUE

You can’t take it with you

they all say

And I believed it

till today

But that was gold

and crowns and

worldly glories

Bud beat those odds

he took his stories

Bud, who knew and

could tell more stories than anyone

collapsed and died last year shortly after

getting a standing ovation at Pincher Creek

PINCHER CREEK ALBERTA

Mid June and Cowboy Poets back in town

voices hoarse from long winters silence

And a thousand and more are hear to hear

for the poets have been listening all year

Listening to the cattle and the coyotes

and the Northern Lights at nights

And they have been reminded

and being reminded they remember

and remembering they come here to remind

And just listening we remember

and unwind

KENDRA

When the natives of this land

suffered a death such as this

they knew how to grieve

They felt it to depths of their being

and cut deep into their arms and legs

that they might reach deeper

Today my friends

I reach and bleed with you

Written for my cousin Kenny

and his wife Betty on the tragic loss of their

eighteen year old daughter

THE MARLBORO MAN

There is no longer

a wild wild West to tame

or outlaws or Red Indians

to join in the old macho game

Of the testing of his manhood

and the building of his fame

And yet he retains the rugged look

of a steel eyed firebrand

that can only be seen in the fearless few

who daily face death at every hand

Though now his risks are reduced

to trippin on the scenery

where he rides for a phony brand

And that cigarette in his hand

DON’T WORRY MATE

Up North working the neighbor’s calves

One of those mixed farm forty cow

no corral kind of operations

good folks though and they us out

Were branding and cutting and vaccinating

in a lean to off the barn eight inches deep

No room for a horse or a rope

so you just have to grab those calves

and throw them down right side up

so they’re dry enough to brand

The farmers son loses his grip on a catch

and the calf tries to bolt past me

I turn quick grab the head and come round

fast to where the farmer stands flat footed

with the big syringe in his hand

needle pointed forward

Into m y shoulder, skin, flesh and the bone

dumping the whole shot of multi task

vaccine

The next day that arm hurts bad

and it doesn’t look good

So we drive down to Mossbank

to see the old Aussie flying doctor

who must have gotten off course

to land in Saskatchewan

He gives me some medicine

and says come back in three days

I say I’ll probably be fine by then

and its sixty miles round trip

He says don’t worry mate

you’re vaccinated for shipping fever

And I’ve been traveling ever since

REKINDLED

Babies

bright smiles

that warmed and seared your heart

Long banked

in photo album embers

One

grandchild’s grin

and you’re ablaze again

A PRARIE VILLANELLE

If prairie wheels again had I

I’d chew the gravel and the air

with prairie roads to fly

I’d plume the earth into the sky

to show them I was there

if prairie wheels again had I

Past places where dead neighbors lie

I’d look for other things to share

if prairie wheels again had I

Then greener farmyards I’d pass by

in mem-mirages free of care

with prairie roads to fly

I’d roll past all that makes you cry

afloat in sunsets clear and fair

if prairie wheels again had I

with prairie roads to fly

“Just some things that happened

to me that rhymed”

Jimmy Stewart