“I wrote this poem in Ameliasburgh, Ontario, while staying in the A-frame that the Canadian poet Al Purdy and his wife Eurithe built, mostly out of salvaged lumber, on the edge of Roblin Lake. The lake itself isn’t very deep—Purdy called it ‘a backwater puddle’—but some days the wind was strong enough to create waves that splashed and broke against the stones at the water’s edge. At night, hearing wind gust over the A-frame’s roof, I could imagine the weather as a kind of invisible companion.”