Farm – Page 2 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Farm

Dogs and Boys

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / September 27, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Twenty thousand years
they walked the plains together

The boy did not know that
The dog did not know that

Author’s Uncle Bruce with Pepper circa 1928

New Hay

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Harvest / September 26, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The scent of hay
thrown upward in the cutting

Too rich and heavy to remain aloft
falls back to lie among its fallen friends

Walk shuffling small feet through it
and it lifts again in clouds to nostrils

Breathed in sweet particles remain
I do believe … there’s some there yet

Threshing Time

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Harvest / September 25, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I remember at Christmas
getting a great threshing machine
A block of wood with wooden spools nailed to the side
but I loved it as I loved the threshing

All through the long summer days
I would walk the fields with my dog
At night my mother rubbed strong liniment
on four year old legs
Growing pains she said, although one always hurt more
and didn’t seem to grow any faster

And the grain grew too, and passed me, and was higher
than I was. And then the harvest and the wonder of it
falling to the binder, and the magic of the machine
as it tied the sheaves and ke-chunked them into the carrier

Then the stooking – little teepees covering the prairie again
and the golden warmth of everything

And the threshing machine; they wouldn’t let me too close
It might eat me like it ate those sheaves, and like the men
in the crew could eat, and they could eat
even when it rained

While I sat for hours, nose to wet window
watching the great gray dinosaur
deep in the timeless mists

And hot clear windless days when everything sang and
the belt slapped and the machine came to life again
and wagons were on both sides
and the big horses were standing strong and ready
and switching flies with dignity

The sun caught the arch of the long plume of straw and
the chaff lifting, and the old hands fed the machine in a
sort of easy sweat-oiled rhyme and the new hands stood
on the sheaves they tried to lift each time

And the old hands laughed, and the new hands laughed
and they were men together

Blue Eyed Boy

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Childhood, Dogs / September 23, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Blue eyed boy
blasts off from breakfast
like a quail on a rail

Collie dog leaps on board
and they’re off across the prairie
barely touching the tops of hills

Sun gives warmth or cloud gives shade
all depending on his whim
birds and rocks and swaying grass
everything living embraces him

Burrs don’t stick and thorns don’t prick
even fences, joining in the play
happily turn their barbs away

Floating along on the wings of four
not long now till they slam that door

Author, about age 4, on the Saskatchewan ranch

What Turns Up

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Birds / August 13, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In the long field by the lake
turning the earth is turning up worms
Looking over your shoulder
you'd swear you were birthing gulls

Sweatband

Audio Recordings, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / August 6, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

he dress of a woman of Lhasa
In its place
Is an invisible element of that place
Made visible
— Wallace Stevens
The halo of a Stetson
has equal earn with angels

The dirt mixed with salt
comes from made-sacred land

And is its voice — Author’s Stetson – sweat earned on Saskatchewan ranch

Zen Cowboy

Audio Recordings, Farm, Personal Growth, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Balance, Buddhism / August 3, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When the bronco
bucks you’d better be
somewhere in that somewhere center

Beware the tilt of think
you or he have the winning hand

Beware the tilt of hate his hide
that brings you forward in the saddle
and the tilt of fear that leans you to the rear

There are no statues of the Buddha
dusting off his sore backside

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Sons of the Pioneers

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / July 29, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

A man in bronze behind a plow
tops a memorial to the settlers
in front of the fading church

The names of the men
and the years that they arrived
my grandfather Emil among them
decorate the plaques below

Thistles catch for a moment and roll by

As nameless as the women
who worked side by side

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

Over Their Shoulders

Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Patterns / June 24, 2020 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

He came of age in the twenties
Bumper crops and a big new house

She came of age in the thirties
Dust and alkali in your pie and eye

When things started looking good
he’d buy a big new shiny car

Those times are coming back

When things started looking good
she’d can a bunch more fruit

Those times might be coming back

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