Cattle – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Cattle

All They Survey

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Contentment, Pride / June 18, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My father
would stand for hours
just looking at his cows

Like God leaning
on a rail fence in heaven
pleased with his creation

Co-Boss

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / June 17, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Co-boss. Co-boss
to call the Holstein home

Co-boss. Co-boss and she comes
in full-udder-rocking rhythm
along the well-trod pasture path

Steps careful into the shadows
and hoof clicks to the second stall
for the evening exchange of gifts

Relief and oats and hay for her
warm milk for the kittens and me
cream and butter for the kitchen

Co-boss. Co-boss to say
equal partners in a gently way

Only One Boss in the Corral

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / June 16, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If you're in the corral at roundup time
you better be ready to think or listen fast

When half a tonw of fear-blind beef
has a horn lined up with your ass
and the boss says jump you jump

Democracy is a thing of beauty
but there's a time and a place for that

Yippee Ai-Ku

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Haiku, Ranch Life / May 21, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Branding time again
babies torn from their mothers
cowcalfany of sound

The Innocence of Snow

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Nature, News, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / January 28, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Winter
was winter
and all the world

When the only light was lamp
and the only power God
and the innocence of snow
lay soft on lad and land

When floating breath of kin and kine
was pure and white as well
and mankind too as far as we could tell

Antennae daily now
break down the door with news of war

Winter on the ranch Kin = Family & Kine = Cattle

Prairie Boy’s Christmas

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Belief, Christmas, Faith / December 25, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

He has trouble imagining Magi
and the deserts they had to cross

But the warmth
of the stable is in his bones
and can easily relate to the babe

Modern Medicine It Ain’t

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / November 24, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

10 cc's of Carnation Milk

Inject it just beneath the skin
pink eye cured in a Hereford calf

Old wives remedies you say
maybe that's how they got that way

Cowversations

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Communication, Humor / November 21, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

One of the reasons I got out of ranching
was the long drought of good conversation

Cowhands
true to their fame are men of few words

Horses ain't bad
they will at least point their ears and pretend

But cows, it was the cows that did it
how they'd saucer eye like listening
while you chewed them out in detail
about all the dumb things that they'd done

Turn away to ruminate upon the lesson
and two days later kick you for no reason

Losses

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Death, Grief / November 8, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Empty as a mouth full of snow - Lois P. Jones

We lost another calf
we lost another crop

We lost an uncle in the war

These are not like keys of city folks
that they find in their other coat

The things we lose out here
don't come back any more

A Shadow of My Farmer Self

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / tagged Work / October 16, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The one
who got up with the summer sun
and toiled till the work was done
is done

The one
who would’ve slept the winter away
if it wasn’t for critters hungry ways
now versifies on his clock
with Seamus Heaney’s squat pen
resting between finger and thumb
instead of a three-tined pitchfork
raising blisters in the hot, hot sun

Credit: Seamus Heaney; DIGGING https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47555/digging

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Sandi Hebley on What the Hell VillanelleJune 10, 2026
Had to go look up “villanelle.” 😏
Sandi Hebley on The AlbumsJune 6, 2026
💕 I love our old albums!
Sandi Hebley on JudyJune 1, 2026
😢 Hugs!
Kimberly Heinrich on The Other WellMay 31, 2026
Neil: THANK YOU for this!! Love it!! You are the best!!!💕💕
Sandi Hebley on Timmy’s Down the WellMay 29, 2026
🤗 Love this!

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