Farm – Page 7 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Farm

When Gum Was Wheat

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / May 14, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Before gum was in a store
with baseball cards and sugar

you could play hide and seek in wheat
and chew the half-ripe kernals half a day

Nothing to spend, nothing to pay
If you had a sister or a brother you had play

A Prairie Villanelle

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nostalgia, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life, Travel / April 19, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

If prairie wheels again had I
I'd chew the gravel and the air
with prairie roads to fly

I'd plume the earth into the sky
to show them I was there
if prairie wheels again had I

Past places where dead neighbours lie
I'd not linger, who would dare
with prairie roads to fly

Dust to dust gets in your eye
I'd look for other things to share
if prairie wheels again had I

Then greener farmyards I'd pass by
in mem-mirages free of care
with prairie roads to fly

I'd roll past all that makes you cry
afloat in susnsets clear and fair
if prairie wheels again had I
with prairie roads to fly

Cowboy Poetry

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / March 22, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

This is not the poetry of pulling calves
in a cold wind and a foot or so of spring snow
with only a vest and a bottle of rye
to keep you dry

This
is the poetry
of that calf that would have died
standing on shaky legs
to drink warm milk
from the cow that would have died

Ranch in Spring

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Birth, Horses, Seasons, Spring / March 21, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The thing about spring is breath

Seeds long in the womb of the earth
open their chambered leaves and breathe

Calves helped from Hereford heifers
shudder along their wet red lengths and breathe

while colts unfold their too long limbs and breathe

Surprise to them in what degree, always awe in me

Palette

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Art & Artists, Beauty / February 21, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

A farmer in a playful mood might plant
a field of purple flowering flax
beside a field of mustard yellow mustard

Van Gogh would give his other ear for such a sight

Moisture is Moisture

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Rain, Snow, Wisdom / January 26, 2024 / 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
equals about 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

40 Below is 40 Below

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Environment, Farm, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Climate Change, Connection, Stories, Temperature, Winter / January 25, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Global warming comes in fits and starts
The thermometer
still bangs away at the bottom sometimes

But everything is mostly easier these days
The Americans
have the taken the U out of fourty
and I take the I out whenever I can

Go down to Texas where
if bullshit was white they’d be able to ski
and tell tall tales of my youth that are truth

Of breaking ice for cattle at 50 below
of shaving a beard too early one year
and beard-shaped frozen blisters rising

They listen and smile
and welcome me in like some long lost kin

40º below zero is where the Fahrenheit and Celsius temperature scales meet.

1 Reply

The Lonely Men

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Bachelors, Hardship, Pioneers, Saskatchewan, Settlers, Solitude / January 17, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Their little dark houses still dotted the prairie when I was growing up

They all seemed to cling to he soil as if their life force had all been used up in the long and difficult transplanting, and they could hang on but no longer grow
Or they stood alone surrounded by sadness and the small and smaller markers of what had fallen to the reaper's scythe

Their roots, loosened year after year
by the hot winds and the deep frosts became more and more brittle

Until one by one they broke off like tumbleweeds and were gone

1 Reply

You Can Bank On It

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Seasons, Winter / January 15, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Through a hole fingernailed
in the fern forested glass
you can see the white forever
and know that winter owns the world

Spring has but a short term note
and summer a revolving credit line
that is doomed to fall due in due course

Winter in the Barn

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Cats, Horses, Memory / January 14, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Steam rises off the backs of big horses

The old Holstein in the second stall
shifts her weight from side to side
matching the rhythm of the milking
and flicks her tail at memories
of summer flies

Across the width of the barn
I stand with mouth open
in my biggest five-year-old oval
catching most of the milk
squirted dead-eye straight
by the laughing hired man

In the tack room
kittens wait by a tin plate
to put their morning moustache on

In my memory it is always warm in the barn

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Tom on Basketball in CanadaApril 18, 2025
Neil, as you may know we live about 15 miles from his former farm. The locals have installed a bronze…
Ken Christopher on Hockey Night in CanadaApril 17, 2025
Good one, it’s still goin on
Ken Christopher on ShitstormApril 4, 2025
My former comment had an error, should have read: Great poem Neil, has some slippery elements that mix it up…
Kenneth on Walden PondApril 3, 2025
Siblants interlapping with interference waves construct this delightful hologram of spring: well done my friend
Ken Christopher on Minutia in MarchApril 1, 2025
21 beats, 4 past hyku, (sp); perhaps a new form. Beautiful poem

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