How To Thatch A Roof

First of all, watch out for wind. That wheat can fly. Choose
long straw, water reed, or combed wheat reed
and place it on the roof in layers. You’ll need some thatching spars—

split willow or hazel wood—for tacking down the yealms,
and a ladder, long and splayed at the base. Use filler
to provide some kick—marl or mackintosh or (the old ones say)

dead cat for luck. Of course all this assumes you’ve grown the reeds,
combed and kept the bundles dry. Accumulating
what you need to roof a house can last a life.

But up there, breathing the winey sweet of bundled straw,
there’s time for gloating, too, when, leaning into
what you’ve made, you run a hand over the leveled course.

If there’s a feather or a mouse, unwitting, woven in,
accept it. Distrust only the wolf and fire—though they say
thatch burns no faster than a closed book. And don’t forget

your knife. Always with building there’s tearing down.
When you’re finished, go inside. Dawdle among the straw-scraps
listening, in the vague late-afternoon light, to secrets

you forgot you knew. Damn syntax and servitude; there’s rapture too.
And remember: those layered reeds are hollow,
layer on layer keeping cold out not because they’re solid,

but because they’re air.