The wind has been pushing me around as long as I’ve known her. Yet nothing prepared me for meeting her on the flatlands where her violence frightened me as she tried to steal the clothes from my body and the hair from my head. I forgot how cold and distant she can be when we returned home to the shores of Lake Ontario. Clearly she inherited more than her share of the Canadian. Her tantrums are legend and one cannot know what will set her off to tear ancient trees out by their roots and lift roofs from their houses and shake the glass in the windows. I have spent a lifetime sheltering in the hills and the hollers to avoid her chilly demeanor. But I will admit here, in this cave where she does not reach, that once in a great while I will hike to the peaks just to feel again her touch on my face.

Sometimes her sighs are
so deep they send a shiver
down my spine to tail.