Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Harvest

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

Revenge of the Barley

Farm, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Harvest / November 3, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Old combine with no cab
beats the barley from the chaff
Pestled porcupine it swirls
to mob you on the downwind run
And fill your shirt from collar to crotch
with an itch that Job would trade for a boil
There's beer in the cooler
if you work for Roy

3 Replies

Kenny and Me

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Beer, Harvest, Youth / September 10, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Ranching at Eighteen
Together we were young
and strong and very bold
and together we could drink
more beer than we could hold

We could drive home late and fast
singing every Johnny Horton song
Then fall asleep for minutes
and still answer the morning gong

We would work it out in the hot hot sun
(so easy then did the poisons yield)
As we sweated bales with pitch forks
and passed gas
in a thousand acre field

New Hay

Farm, Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Harvest / September 9, 2019 / 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

Photo by Boba Jovanovic on Unsplash

Sunsets

Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Harvest, Hope / October 13, 2018 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Holding Up the Line

Cowboy Poetry, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Coffee, Harvest / September 30, 2018 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

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