PREPARING PATHWAYS 

Raking paths 

across the ranch

for men to walk on,

clearing the Tres 

Piedras property

of its pinecones 

and pyramids 

of horse shit -

wheelbarrows and 

wheelbarrows of it -

is the way a rag-tag 

crew prepares for

a Men’s retreat.

You could easily 

say This is mindless 

work and you’d be 

wrong. Sweeping 

a forest clean

of its every last 

pine needle

is the chop wood, 

carry water

that will welcome 

the horde of men 

arriving into the wild, 

so they can, 

under a star-filled sky,

clear out their own 

shit, so that new 

possibilities 

and pathways

can emerge in them.

They will do this work

simply by sending 

their raking breaths

into the pinecones 

of the divinity 

of their boundless brains.