Farm – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Farm

Dark Skies

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Contemplation, Milky Way, Stars / October 16, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

He
turns off the TV
and goes outside to count
bullet holes in the sky

Rising moon is a lime in a Corona

New-cut hay is youth
and him lying on his back
traveling the milk-paved path

He lays back on the hay

Feels of the Farm – Flax

Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Grain, Senses, sensuality / October 15, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

You can't walk on flax in a bin
quick as quicksand it pulls you in

But run your hand through it
back and forth on edge or cupped

Smooth as purple flower petals
and as cool as spring all summer

Too young to yet compare
it to the inside of a woman's thigh

1 Reply

Royalty

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Prairie, Rich Life, Wealth / October 14, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Wheat of gold
covered the hills

There were purple robes of flax
and castles
aplenty in the clouds

The kind and queen kept our lineage from us
but we only had
to look around to know

How the Tractor Engine

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Harvest, Wheat / October 13, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

How the tractor engine sings
in a different key when the sun goes down

Like the stooking gets a little easier
when you've had a few pulls on the water bag

Things you wouldn't notice driving by
fast enough to see us still-life in the field

Threshing Time

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life / tagged Harvest, Wheat / October 12, 2024 / 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 big 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 or 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

Canada Geese

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Autumn, Guns, Harvest, Hunting / October 11, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

The veeing geese fly freer now
across the autumn sky

No longer do they gorge
on my father's golden grain

No longer do I lie in wait
twelve gauge at the ready
to bring them in for dinner

Blind

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Autumn, Birds, Fall, Hunting, Migration / October 10, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Lying on our backs in shallow graves
we've dug in pre-dawn frozen dirt

Golden straw pulled over us
to not be seen by Canada's geese
stopping for breakfast going to Texas

Waiting less time than it seems
to hear the honking and leap up
to exact our tithes on the grain
we and the gods all year provided

Fowl Supper

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Community, Harvest, Sharing / September 22, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Don't call it fall
even though it happens then

Because it's all
about turkey and the trimmings
and the trimmings are community

Men had the toil and the joy
of bringing in the sheaves
Women the toil and joy
of turning them into bread and pies

In Tibet and the Southwest states
sand paintings are made and blown away
nothing is permanent so they say
nobody counts how long the feelings stay

1 Reply

Why Now

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Ranch Life, Relationships / tagged Frustration, Work / September 20, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Why Now! Dad would say
when anything at all broke
in the middle of a busy day
of farming and ranching work

Wasn't sure if he was mad
at the gods or at me (It felt like me)

No use to say that things break from use and most often when you're using them
it was a personal affront in every case
purely intended to inconvenience him

Retired and attired for an old friend's birthday party
when the phone rang to say Canceled
because of the guest of honor's sudden death

The red fire again climbing up the whites of his eyes

Pulling Pipe

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Family, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / tagged Community, Heroes, Struggle, Work / September 18, 2024 / 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 made
and we've got to get it done by dark

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

Looking back fifty years from a poet's perch

I pull, spin and stack
metaphor and meaining

Back then it was just men
doing what they had to do

and white-faced cattle waiting

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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
Gerri Aiudi on Dad and RoySeptember 21, 2024
great poem ... love it

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