Neil Meili

Zen Cowboy Poet & Freelance Philosopher

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Tag Archives: Work

Sodbusters

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Displacement, First Nations, Foreclosure, Homesteading, Native American, Pioneers, Settlers, Work / March 14, 2025 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

We homestead in our bodies too - Bill Holm

You have to prove it up
build some shelter
plant some seed
or let the next guy try

You will turn up arrowheads
---- the bankers got them too

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/dominion-lands-policy

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

Swathing

Audio Recordings, Farm, Ranch Life / tagged Harvest, Nourishment, Pride, Satisfaction, Wheat, Work / November 14, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Turning for home at dusk
he takes a moment to look back in pride
at the last perfect swath among perfect swaths

Lines straight as Protestant prayer
overlapping and gold as Brunhilda's braids
floating on firm stubble cut at perfect length
to allow the prairie winds to blow above below
and dry the kernals in the holding heads
to Number 1 Northern, best wheat in the world

Tonight once more he'll fall asleep
counting loaves of bread instead of sheep

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

Freeways – Houston

Audio Recordings, Travel / tagged Commute, Congestion, Greed, Smog, Traffic, Work / February 4, 2024 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Every day - high tide and low
the same metal corks float in and out
Unable to escape the pull of silver
and the carbon covered moon

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

Long Hot Saskatchewan Summer Haiku 2

Audio Recordings, Farm, Haiku, Ranch Life / tagged Fatigue, Heat, Summer, Tractor, Work / July 23, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

Plow breaks again
metal too hot to touch
will evening come

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

The Courage of Miners

Audio Recordings / tagged Danger, Death, Miracles, Work / March 25, 2023 / by neil_2015_wordpress@neilmeili.com

For Tiger who made it and Benny who didn't

To go down each day
into your grave

And rise
at end of shift
with Lazarus-like joy

Except when you don’t

In celebration of Lazarus Saturday

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Ken on MossbankMarch 23, 2025
Beautiful, that could go on a t-shirt
Nancy Fierstien on TroubledMarch 18, 2025
Keep writing, Neil. Keep writing and writing and writing…because you have so much tucked inside that is worth saying to…
Ken Christopher on Negative Space in New York CityMarch 17, 2025
Prairie boy in NYC
Anonymous on Cowboys Will Be BoysMarch 6, 2025
I love this poem make more like it
Nancy Fierstien on Redwoods in the RainFebruary 27, 2025
Love, love, love, love, love this one Neil!

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