Cattle – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Cattle

Buffalo Chips

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Manure, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Childhood, Play / October 3, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Lily pads floating
on the sea of prairie grass

Heat for the tepees
or the homesteader's cabin

Nothing wasted in the West

And every boy knew
that a good sharp stick or a pointy-toed shoe
would let you know
if one was just right, or still a little too new

And I'm here to tell you, that compared to a good dry chip
meeting a West wind's invitation
a Frisbee is a weak and poor, plastic imitation

Smells of the Corrals

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Manure, Ranch Life / tagged Horses / October 1, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Horses don’t smell like cows
except when your nose is full
of acrid smoke at branding time

Disinfectant
from the pail for sloshing on the bag
after their prairie oysters are shucked
and later them oysters on the open fire

Burning
from the wire-saw freeing the ingrown horn

Dung flung
and dung hung on boots and belt and butt
from the calf that beat you at ‘who throws who’

1 Reply

Motherin’ Up

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Coping, Grief / September 14, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sometimes you lose a cow
sometimes you lose a calf
You wrap the orphan
in the dead calf's skin
and the mother takes her in
like kin
Gold enough there for a country song
It's a hurtin song - you can sing along
About true love died and true love gone
and foolin yourself just long enough
to keep on keeping on

Peace on the Prairie

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / September 13, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Cowboy in the City

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Nature / tagged Fear / September 12, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

A bull in his place
is a creature of grace

It is not the bull
but the fear in the bull
that endangers the china in the shop

Cowboys & Ranchers

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / August 12, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Cowboys may love their horses
but it's the ranchers love the cows

The cowboys know it's their job to keep them critters safe
and pay and found depends
on their not coming to bad ends

But you won't catch a cowboy
with a soft light in his eye
counting again by one and ten
every head in the holding pen

And ranchers ain't so likely
when the summer flies are high
and the herd a scattered mess
to wish them all in a warmer place
than the sun-baked August West

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

They Had Some Cows

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Travel / July 14, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The Cherhill Chalk Horse

Little Brown Jug

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Music / June 6, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My father had three sons
and taught them all
how to tie a grain sack, how to cut a calf
how to talk to a horse you walked up behind
so you wouldn't get kicked or killed
Good things to know
but none of us is working cattle now
He played a mean harmonica
would that he would have taught us that

One of author’s father’s favorite tunes. Here done by Glenn Miller

Mother’s Poem

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / May 8, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The kitchen has always been the centre 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 cutbanks rising like mountains along the eastern shore
Or more directly to the south forms of her old neighbours homes rising and shimmering like memories of her youth
Seasons spiral out and in from this centre crocus and buttercups in the greening grass
cactus flowers and the joy of newborn calves
The growing season of the grain
and golden glory of a well stocked field
The shortening of days into winter and the every 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 centre to warm and love and feed
and safely tuck away

Mom and brother Wally in the ranch kitchen 1952

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