Cows – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Cows

Practice

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Personal Growth, Ranch Life / tagged Spirituality / September 3, 2021 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

for Aikido master Larry Novick and my father

All the Gurus of the East
teach their pupils that it’s best
to start each and every day
with a special way to pray

Meditation or breath they say
will set and keep you on the path

All the farmer fathers of the West
teach their pupils the same way

Chores it is and forking hay
and hay that used to be hay
and calmness ping and rhythm
in the milking of the sacred cow

Motherin Up

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / April 29, 2021 / 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 hurting song - you can sing along
About true love died and true love gone and foolin yourself just long enough to keep on keeping on

Co-boss

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / April 28, 2021 / 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 gentle way

Children Have

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Manure, Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / April 15, 2021 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Author with sister Pat (Patsy then) smelling the snow back on the ranch

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The Innocence of Snow

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / March 12, 2021 / 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 that door with news of war

Winter on the ranch Kin = Family & Kine = Cattle

Cowboy Confessions

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / December 22, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Even after
all those hundreds and hundreds herded
he’d not given that much thought to cows

Never got the hot shock of the branding
or the pain of seven stomach aches at once

And all that bawling after weaning
more his lack of sleep than their grieving

The Question

Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / June 25, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

There’s dad sitting
by the after branding fire
with some after branding beers

And we get to talking
heart to heart
of trails together and apart

And of the things we saw
which ones brought us awe

All They Survey

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / June 23, 2020 / 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

Photo by Nadine on Unsplash

1 Reply

Fourteen Hours in the Saddle

Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / May 7, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The Farm, The Ranch and the Sweeping Scythe

Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Environment, Farm, Manure, Nature, Ranch Life / May 6, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sunrise can be brilly bright
and all day long
everything out to get you

The horse can kick or fall
the bull has horns of steel

Every machine is grinding its teeth
in wait for a chance to bite

and every snowstorm
eager to find you
too far from the barn
and stiffen you like the manure-pile cat

The sunsets worth surviving for

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