Love is…
…inconvenient. Love is untidy. Love is relentless, ruthless and rapacious.
Done well, it’s hilarious, playful and redemptive – Gina Barreca
(for Carrie)

We don’t decide who we love.
Who we hate, yes,
who we’re jealous of,
but never who we end up loving.

It’s not fate or anything—
that would be silly—
but it is out of our control
and often bloody inconvenient.

But, seriously, what do you do?
Love is like a stray dog
that finds its way to your door
that even a cat person can’t turn away.

Jim Murdoch is a Scottish writer living in Cumbernauld. He’s been writing for over fifty years and his list of rejections is voluminous but he keeps at it. He’s written most things over the years—novels, stories, songs, even plays—but he thinks of himself primarily as a poet and is currently producing poems at an unpresented pace. There are worse things to be doing in your sixties.