Ranch Life – Neil Meili

Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Category: Ranch Life

Weathered In

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged Connection, Elements, Weather, Winter / January 4, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Weather in the city
has a lot of walls involved

Weather in the country
is God in all his nearness

How Many Pins on the Head of an Angel

Audio Recordings, Family, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Relationships, Remembering / tagged Christmas, Connection / December 26, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Twenty after midnight and up alone
sharing every Christmas past
with the angel of Austin present
alight on the well lit tree

Telling her of the first thin pine
strung with popcorn and candles clipped
back on the ranch before the power

Every crackle of every log
every crinkle of tissue torn
every child's first Christmas
and every parent's last
and every cousin and uncle and aunt
no longer as they say extant

Praying her to spread
her wings and wonder wide
that we may gather them all by dawn

Christmas Cards

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Travel / tagged Christmas, Holiday, Traditions / December 25, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Back when mail was mail
and jam came in a pail
(with strawberries big as your thumb)
the thing I most remember
are the envelopes of December

It didn't surprise us
that Santa came by sleigh
anybody to get to our ranch
would have had to come by sleigh

so they came by card instead
and helped us light each clip-on candle
around the popcorned tree

1 Reply

Tastes of Childhood

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Nostalgia, Ranch Life, Remembering / tagged Aging, Christmas, Experience, imagination, Literature, Traditions / December 24, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

When I was two or three
and my mother read to me

When Alice fell down the rabbit hole
I fell down the rabbit hole
tumbling over and over in the air
the memory is still there

Ribbon candy and real candles on the tree

Christmas chocolates made at home
from a factory recipe someone
slipped to someone on a train

Taste buds still budding
tasting with my whole body

Slowly I've forgotten how
only love and fear can do it now

John Deere

Audio Recordings, Cowboy Poetry, Farm, Personal Growth, Ranch Life / tagged Humor, Tractor, Vibrations / December 21, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

After a poetry reading down in Texas
a couple of smart successful executive types who seemed to like what they came to hear are buying me a long necked beer

While searching for a common thread that between us there might be
we discovered that it's none other than a John Deere model 'D'

So we talk about the good old days
all growing up and farming wheat
and that old slow two cylinder's whump whump heartbeat

All marveling and remembering how you could stand on one all day
and still be fresh and ready to go out all night and play

We agreed at the time we weren't sure why
although I think I've got if figured now
and because of the kind of a guy I am
I'll gladly tell you now

You see

A little while back I run across a group
advertising a marvelous breakthrough
a mind improvement program teaching something completely new

If you give them a few hundred dollars
and about the best part of a year
they will take you from Beta to Alpha
relaxed as any guru and wise as any seer

So I buy all of their expensive gear
put those tiny speakers in each ear
and darned if I don't hear

The sound of an old John Deere

1 Reply

Bull Low

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Machinery, Power, Trucks, Work / December 20, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Only in trucks the lowest gear
had a name that was not a steer

Anything you
wanted to haul up the steepest hill
Anything you wanted
to pull out of wherever it was stuck

Deep throated power in that sound
the mightiest beast for miles around

1 Reply

Can’t Take the Farm Out of the Boy

Audio Recordings, Family, Farm, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / December 19, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

What I learned
of poetry from my father

is that the tractor sings
and just this RPM

Author and his dad on Oliver 88 tractor

Away From The Buildings

Audio Recordings, Environment, Farm, Nature, Ranch Life / tagged landscape / December 18, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

To the north is the ranchland
a soft cloth crumpled

To the south ironed
flat and stretched tight
to the treeless shores of the legend lake

And there is a difference in the day
when you stay in the flatlands
or go up into the hills

1 Reply

All They Survey

Audio Recordings, Cattle, Cows, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Appreciation, Gratitude, Pride / December 17, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

My father
would stand for hours
just looking at his cows

Like God leaning
on a rail fence in heaven
pleased with his creation

1 Reply

Not in Kansas Anymore

Audio Recordings, Farm, Nature, Poems about Poetry, Ranch Life / December 10, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

I like to live in the sound of water
- William Stafford

Bill grew up
in soft-furred hills and sea-flat plains
Might as well been me
in the south parts of Saskatchewan

Water rare as pearls
set us both on a lifetime seeking

Tin-dipper thirst
and big dipper quenching

1 Reply

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Gail on In-TuitionJanuary 2, 2025
Love it! “The cost of this is only in the not.”
Ken Christopher on Missing the MysteryDecember 30, 2024
Yes, the Mystery is what keeps it exciting
Ken Christopher on Christmas CardsDecember 29, 2024
Yep, the sleigh got us to town on train day and me to school every day, the poem is a…
Anonymous on Why Children Are ChristmasDecember 23, 2024
So simple, so captivating! Nice Neil to give me the feel :) Murray A
Ken Christopher on John DeereDecember 21, 2024
Love it❤️

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String Too Short To Save
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