The wind followed me everywhere today like a big idea that I wasn’t sure what to do with just yet.

Love Poem as Ars Poetica

Because I am the dog who thought
her pain was a location, shuffling in
and out of rooms, trying to escape it,
it forever following along,

you stick with me everywhere — not
you, but the idea. We begin
with something big, water, or the wind, thinking we can shape it
before it all goes wrong.

—Erica McAlpine, in The Country Gambler, 2016 , Shearsman Books, 2016