Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Work

Long Hot Saskatchewan Summer Haiku 2

Audio Recordings, Farm, Haiku, Ranch Life / tagged Fatigue, Heat, Summer, Tractor, Work / July 23, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Plow breaks again
metal too hot to touch
will evening come

Roundup

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Branding, Work / July 9, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

It's about the hardest dustiest best work a man can get

The pride of the heeling rope, thrown snake quick fro a good horse and the slow steady pull, dragging the white face out where the boys with the hot irons can record the feat

Three hundred cows sing of calves lost and found, and above and through it all the full strong laugh of one of the boys where a slip was made or a kick well placed

At the end of the day, you wrap a rope sore hand around a spring cold beer, and lean back against the old pole fence deep in the pain, and the sweat, and the moment

Completely released from the wheel of desire
There's no place you'd rather be
There's no one you'd rather be with
and you're too damned tired to move anyway

The Courage of Miners

Audio Recordings / tagged Danger, Death, Miracles, Work / March 25, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

For Tiger who made it and Benny who didn't

To go down each day
into your grave

And rise
at end of shift
with Lazarus-like joy

Except when you don’t

In celebration of Lazarus Saturday

Hi Ho Hi Ho

Audio Recordings, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / tagged Joy, Work / March 24, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Work

I sometimes think about it, but not too hard

Like, shouldn’t there be a different word
for doing what we love or hate for money

Like how I got to drive big trucks at eighteen
that I dreamed about at eight
and they paid me

Like playing cowboy and riding the range
where the deer and the antelope play
and getting paid

Building buildings bigger than Lego
and getting paid

Maybe work is about being serious
but I seriously question that too

I mean, what can be more joyous and serious
than a child adding one last block to his tower
or me, as I write this poem and look up
to see it is 1:25 in the morning

Living Aloha

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Hawaii, Paradise, Poverty, Work / March 23, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

On Kauai an average house
costs half a million or more
while half the people and more
still work for a minimum wage

Around a grass shack tenement
broken handles of tired tools
lie buried in lava gravel
and broken hands that held them
hold a cut-rate mainland beer

The wind from the ocean stirs
creaking limbs on a dry lanai
orchid's breath still whispering
songs of an old deep joy

1 Reply

Memory Lanes

Audio Recordings, Nostalgia / tagged Memory, Work / September 27, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Once again in summer
where prairie blacktop ribbons
over Saskatchewan’s slow rolling hills
past grazing cow and half grown grain

driving on the road I helped to build
back when I was eighteen teen
five hundred years and yesterday ago
hauling asphalt to the spreader
in a truck hot, dirty, and mean
and eating steak for breakfast
with men of tar and grit

still with a smile
each time I pass
a road crew at their work

the odor, odious
to you and almost all
as sweet to me as youth
and lilac in the wind

Highway 2 from Moose Jaw to Mossbank
Photo by author, September 2022

Living Over the Store

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia / tagged Life, Work / February 21, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Living over the store
or in our case behind it
was very much the norm back then

And then the burbs and long drives came

And then computers and covid
and we’re back living in it

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