Farm – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Farm

Moisture is Moisture

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Farming, Rain, Snow / April 26, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Moisture is moisture
is the mantra of the dryland farmer

It doesn't matter if it's snow or rain
or if a foot of one
about equals an inch of the other

He is happy enough to sit
by the window and watch it fall

And any kid that complains
they can't go outside and play
will be quick-slapped by the adage

In celebration of April blizzards

Black Beauty

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Cats, pets / March 29, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When we moved to Grandfather's old farm
no on had been living there for a while
and all the cats had gone wild

We found a litter of kittens
hidden deep in a corner of the loft
and among them
the most beautiful black and white kitten

Spitting and crouching under the eaves
she scratched all of us to the bone
If I'd been a tree there would
have been six rings

Much persistence we got her out
much time and love and we tamed her
if one every really tames a cat

Best cat ever
adopted by our cousins when we moved
and one of the things we most looked forward to on our visits was Black Beauty and her newest of who knew how many litters

The tomcats in that town were also
excelled judges of beauty

Our Shop Was a Town

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Prepared, Self Sufficint, Work / March 15, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Hardware store
of bins along the wall
with nuts and sores and bolts
well sorted out from large to small

Tools of every kind handy to the hand
and jacks and pry-bars for any lift or pull

Welding shop well set up
with helmet and rod for every job
and blacksmith's anvil and hammers
to bend or straighten as the need decreed

Lumber yard of saws and planes
with nail kegs lined up along the floor
and a good supply of wood of every size

A vet's supply for animal ills
a yellow stretcher for barbed wire
and every kind of skill it took
to keep the farm ranch running
without driving forty miles to Moose Jaw

And All the Ships at Sea

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Home, Journey / March 14, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In Arabia
camels are called
the ships of the desert

On the prairies
what Charles Simic calls
armadas of bed sheets and shirts
tell the sailors they're safely home

The Farm, The Ranch and the Sweeping Scythe

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Death / March 13, 2026 / 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

Death May Be Different

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Acceptance, Aging, Death, Dying, Grace, Transition / March 11, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Death may be different
for folks from the city

For farm boys
maybe as simple as
getting on the old bay
hands loose on the reins
knowing it knows the way to the barn

How I Lost My Faith – In Preachers

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Cowardice, Humor / March 3, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

It was a cold and muddy Sunday
Our little caravan of Christians
children, parents and student minister
stuck in the spring mud a mile from church

Me and city cousin Wayne
the chosen ones at age seven
chosen to walk
to the nearest neighbor
while the others wait in the cars

The neighbour's not home
but his Cockshutt 40 tractor is

Some combination of farm boy bravado
and reluctance to slog
back to the cars in defeat
comes out as "I can drive a tractor!"

One foot each on the clutch and a good deal of riding gets us into low gear
and off at about 2 miles per

The student minister meets us
two thirds of the way back

As our leader
in all things spiritual and practical
he decrees that we are going
far too slow
and selects another gear
(probably at random, he's from the city too)

The one he picks is the fastest
known in these parts as "Road Gear"
and we quickly accelerate to thirty

which causes the preacher to panic
(or remember the he forgot his bible)
and leap off

leaving us to wrestle the big red monster
now wildly careening from rut to rut
and rocketing toward the mired cars
and fearful families

Wrenching the wheel to
at the last possible moment
we narrowly avoid death and destruction
and stall to stop in the water-filled ditch
amidst the prayers of the congregation

1 Reply

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

For the Poetry

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Flight, Personal Growth, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Education / January 6, 2026 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

For the poetry
I have walked long walks
on large ranch with faithful dog
and picked the crocus from the earth

For the poetry
I have comforted
a mother and bowed to a father

Gone to schools
that taught strange things
and passed them on to others

Fallen in love and never out
rode horses and flown planes
and built buildings stick by stick

1 Reply

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

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Cowboy Poetry
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Environment
Family
Farm
Flight
Haiku
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Manure
Nature
News
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Personal Growth
Pilots
Poems about Poetry
Ranch Life
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Remembering
String Too Short To Save
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