Cattle – Page 2 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Cattle

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

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

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

Movies Got It Wrong

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Cowboys, Westerns, Work / November 27, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Most of the real cowboying
was riding off into the sunrise

Saddling up in the first half-light
to get to where the cattle are
while those doggies are still doggy

Do as much with them as you can
before the heat and the heel flies hit
then head your tired horses home

Sunsets ain't for riding into
they're meant for bullshit and beer
leaning on the fence like you earned it

Ode to the Farmer

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Appreciation, Danger, Death, Hunger / November 9, 2023 / 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

The Farm, The Ranch and the Sweeping Scythe

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Environment, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Adversity, Beauty, Death, Hardship, Weather / November 8, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Sunrise can be brilly bright
and all day long
everything out to get you

The horse can kick or fall
the bull has horns of steel

Every machine is grinding its teeth
in wait for a chance to bite

and every snowstorm
eager to find you
too far from the barn
and stiffen you like the manure-pile cat

The sunsets worth surviving for

1 Reply

Where News is News

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, News, Ranch Life / tagged NASA, Small Town, Space Travel / August 4, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

On April 16th 1972
Apollo 16 blasted off
for a landing on the moon

While on a farm
just outside Coderre Saskatchewan
a two headed calf was being born

For 50 miles
in all directions
one was bigger news than the other

Dreams of My Father

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Dreams / July 20, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Six weeks you lay in that coma
what dreams you had
I never asked, you never said

The telling of dreams
was not a morning ritual in our home

If in grade two
I had been asked of yours
I'd most likely have said
More cows and a better horse

Little Brown Jug

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Music / July 19, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My father had three sons

and taught them all
how to tie a grain sack, how to cut a calf
how to talk to a horse you walked up behind so you wouldn't get kicked or killed

Good things to know
but none of us is working cattle now

He played a mean harmonica
would that he would have taught us that

One of author’s father’s favorite tunes. Here done by Glenn Miller

1 Reply

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

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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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