by Ellen McHugh

Longing for transcendence,
I escape to the hills,

but it’s awfully hard going up
on your knees. Stay, he says,

just before I go, no idea where—Ah,
and ah . . . He’s come to terms with 

my walking contradictions—   wants 
to save me from my own masks 

and oblivion.  Still, he sees 
through my eyes all the perfectly 

humdrum things—this pair of running shoes, 
for instance, all the story behind them.  

And my world keeps its spin—cannot 
hold apart from him (He wants

it held).  The earth breathes—No, 
the earth sighs—in rhythm with 

his sighing, to see what I have so often failed to see, 
as always consequential.  

Ellen McHugh is a retired nurse and former adjunct instructor of English Composition at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland, Ohio where she also served on the editorial staff of the school’s online literary journal, the Chagrin River Review. She holds an MA in English from Cleveland State University. Several of her poems have appeared in Cleveland State’s Whiskey Island and Litbreak magazines. Currently, Ellen is retired from work but not from life. She enjoys sketching, mulching, helping out in her community, and meeting up once monthly with the Church Ladies. She and her husband of 40 some years have three daughters and three grandchildren—each one, a blessing.