October 2019 – Page 2 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Monthly Archives: October 2019

Modern Medicine it Ain’t

Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / October 21, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

10 cc’s of Carnation milk

Inject it just beneath the skin
pink eye cured in a Hereford calf

Old wives remedies you say
maybe that’s how they got that way

The Sheep of Holland

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Disease / October 20, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sheep soft on the soft wet grass
between our house and the old windmill

Sheep running in the distance
a long row of cotton candy
pulled by an invisible string

March lambs gambolling
on the sides and tops of dikes

The black cloud of hoof and mouth
gathering over England
strikes as we leave

Watching the news in Atlanta
my farmer fear pulls me back

Memory revises

I stand in the bare fields
look at the bare dikes

Taste the burning wool

2 Replies

The Farmer’s Daughter

Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Children / October 19, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

That little skipping step
the white cotton dress
the pebbles rolling
down the path

The sunflowers turning
to watch her as she passes

1 Reply

Bee is for Beauty

Nature, Relationships, String Too Short To Save / October 18, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I buzz between
on impossible wing
your nectar and your honey

Mud

Nature, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Kids / October 17, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

there aint nothing like mud for misery and fun for curse deep wheel to the axle and rivers with sticks and squish between the toes and fallen on top of the one that just fell and pants stiff to cracking before you're half way home grown ups are no fun

4 e e

Poems about Poetry / October 16, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

thank u mr cummings

you r
forwardback
& sides
ever amuse 2 me

& everyletter of my verse
backshook
in scrabblesack
better 4 it

Ides of April

Remembering / tagged Fire, Paris / October 15, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

In the cathedral of Notre Dame a holy hush long reigned Soft kiss of shoe on stone soft cross and genuflect of knee beneath the breath confession and whispered rosaries of rote But sometimes you just have to scream

6 months ago today the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris suffered a terrible fire. This photo was taken during the blaze.

2 Replies

Pie

Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Baking, Family Traditions / October 14, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

It ain’t the pie
it’s that Momma made it

Lemon with mountain meringue

Deep apple - with a slice of cheese
(or else it’s the kiss without the squeeze)

Blueberry, saskatoon or cherry
the berry can vary the taste’s the same

Wood-fired memory of the ranch again

Enjoying leftover pie for breakfast today – Remnants of our Canadian Thanksgiving feast.

Baling Love

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Manure, Ranch Life / October 13, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When it’s over 90 in July alfalfa gets dry
and blows into the knotter
and the knots won’t stay tied
So you ride on the bouncing back
where each ke-chunk of the plunger
blows chaff in your eye as you search for
loose ends of twine that you finally find
and tie into a new knot, with love, or not

Then you pile them in piles of five
to keep the wet weather at bay
and you pile them any which way
or you pile them with love and pride
pile them right like Frank Lloyd Wright

Hurried by a wind blowing in from Alaska
You handle that same bale again in the fall
tossing it up on the wagon, kneeing it with
bloody knees through thistle-torn jeans, or
an overhand flip with a three-tined fork and
the grace and precision of a pole vault champ

Fourth time you see that bale
you unload that wagon and make a stack
while chaff turns your collar to sandpaper
And you can do it so when you stand back
you can see every bale fits without a crack

Fifth time you see that bale
it’s winter and maybe forty below
prying frozen cubes out of that stack
where the cattle are waiting, with steam
rising from hot breath and fresh manure
and you carefully cut each Ariadne thread
so not even Theseus could follow it back
through their labyrinth of seven stomachs

Next time you see it is in late spring
when four feet of crap in the calf shed has
melted to the bottom and you’re in and out
with the front end loader and the ammonia
clearing a whole winter from your sinuses

And then off to the fields to spread it out and
complete the circle, trying to stay up wind
and as old Bob used to say, “keeping your
mouth open to keep your face clean”

All that to feed your family, and the world
all that with love, or not

Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

2 Replies

Ode to the Farmer

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Ranch Life / October 12, 2019 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

No one will be surprised by the report
that farming is a very dangerous sport

What flapping empty-fingered gloves
point back to momentary lapses
What limbs with what power
have been taken off
by power take-offs

What tendons snapped like glass
and bones cut clean as grass
by unthinking mowers

And what of those neighbours
dead and true
who for a minute forgetting
what they knew
through red machines
combined with their grain
All these have earned his dusty tear
and many a “who’s next” fear

Year after year after year after year

And yet deep in the soils of time
the seeds of his goodness
are growing
while the world
turns in slow seasons

And he will be ready
when at last they declare
a true war on poverty
and are willing to bomb
with wheat

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Ken Christopher on Buddy TrainingFebruary 19, 2025
Yep, tough love
Kimberly Heinrich on Dog YearsFebruary 18, 2025
You could not possibly have known that today was the day that I had to have my beloved dog euthanized.…
Barbara Joy Bruce on FebruaryFebruary 13, 2025
love it! Thanks, Neil!
Ken Christopher on Ancestry . BarnFebruary 7, 2025
You bet; nice one Neil
Barb on Her Mother Sings to VioletsFebruary 2, 2025
💜💓💜

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