Cows – Page 4 – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Cows

Cowboy in the City

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Nature / tagged Fear / September 12, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

A bull in his place
is a creature of grace

It is not the bull
but the fear in the bull
that endangers the china in the shop

Cowboys & Ranchers

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / August 12, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Cowboys may love their horses
but it's the ranchers love the cows

The cowboys know it's their job to keep them critters safe
and pay and found depends
on their not coming to bad ends

But you won't catch a cowboy
with a soft light in his eye
counting again by one and ten
every head in the holding pen

And ranchers ain't so likely
when the summer flies are high
and the herd a scattered mess
to wish them all in a warmer place
than the sun-baked August West

Pulling Pipe

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / July 21, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Trouble down the well
and me, my dad and my brothers
are Texas roughnecks
pulling, spinning and stacking pipe
pipe and rod and "Careful dammit!
If you drop that rod the well is shot"

We're Red Adair, fighting a fire
we're wet and muddy and cold and mad
and we've got to get it done by dark

The gold down there's not black but red
an iron rich sea hiding away
fro the pulling power of the prairie sun

Looking back fifty years from a poet's perch
I pull, spin and stack
metaphor and meaning
Back then it was just men
doing what they had to do
and white-faced cattle waiting

They Had Some Cows

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Travel / July 14, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The Cherhill Chalk Horse

Losses

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Death, War / February 27, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Empty as a mouth full of snow - Lois P. Jones

We lost another calf
we lost another crop

We lost an uncle in the war

These are not like keys of city folk
that they find in their other coat

The things we lose out here
don’t come back any more

Thinking today of the people of Ukraine: The farmers and the city folk

1 Reply

The Magic of Moose Jaw

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships / February 20, 2022 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Who could sleep the night before
going to town in the truck with dad

Him and me in the front
white faced cows in the back
mooing it clear they wanted to stay
as much as I wanted to go

There would be the stockyards
and buildings bigger than a barn
and lunch at the Harwood Hotel
veal cutlets for him, burger for me

Two men together, five and thirty five
one driving home in the afternoon sun
one curled up on the seat

Henry Moore

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Art, sculpture / December 8, 2021 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Henry Moore was a smart old cowboy
a smart old cowboy was he

Just as sly as a fox
be bought twenty-foot salt blocks
and set them out in West Texas in winter

Where a thousand strong tongues
changed those basic hard foods
into a bunch of reclining nudes

There are times when it bothers
my conscience to see
them hangin’ around London,
New York, and D.C.

Then I remember old Hank is one of the boys
just suckerin’ some dudes with these toys

So I decide not to chip off the bronze

Winner at the Great Salt Lick Contest, Baker City Oregon
https://whitdeschner.com/salt-lick-gallery/

1 Reply

Dreams of My Father

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Illness, Stroke / December 7, 2021 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Six weeks you lay in a 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

Cowversations

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cowboy Poetry, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / December 5, 2021 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

One of the reasons I got out of ranching
was the long drought of good conversation

Cowhands
true to their fame are men of few words

Horses ain’t bad
they will at least point their ears and pretend

But cows, it was the cows that did it
how they’d saucer eye like listening
while you chewed them out in detail
about all the dumb things that they’d done

Turn away to ruminate upon the lesson
and two days later kick you for no reason

Cows in the Rain

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows / tagged Meditation / December 3, 2021 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Cows in the rain
standing still as time

Red coats black
and black coats blacker

Calm as a statue of the Buddha
who will not break a mudra to wipe a dripping brow

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Ken Christopher on War WoundsNovember 12, 2024
So true, the barbed wire 👍🏼
Niece Karen on Quaking in the AtticOctober 23, 2024
Perfect metaphor - you captured me perfectly!
Ken Christopher on God is Getting OnOctober 22, 2024
Anger contained in love
Murray on Feels of the Farm – FlaxOctober 15, 2024
Now that's vintage knowledge Neil!!!! Hope you're feeling much better. Your poem would suggest you are!!
Ken Christopher on Fowl SupperSeptember 22, 2024
Wonderful poem Neil

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