INSTRUCTIONS FOR BUILDING STRAW HUTS by Yusef Komunyakaa.

First you must have unbelievable faith in water, in women dancing like hands playing harps as principle forces for straw to grow stalks of fire.

You must understand the year that begins with your hands tied behind your back, worship of dark totems weighed down with night-birds that shift their weight & leave holes in the sky.

You must know what’s behind the shadow of a treadmill; its window the moon’s reflection-the silent season that reaches toward red sunlit hills which everything returns to.

You must know the hard silence of building walls that sway with summer storms-locking arms to a frame of air, frame of oak rooted to ancient ground where the door is constructed last-just wide enough for two lovers to enter hands & knees.

You must dance the weaver-bird’s song about mending water & light with straw, earth, mind, bright loom of grain un-tortured with bushels of thorns. . .

Reference:
Yusef Komunyakaa