Ever After

—with a line from James Merrill

Like children who have found the world is good,
we slip into the shadows of the wood
and follow doe-tracks downhill to the stream,
then with the pressure of the current cold
against our knees, we cross from dream to dream,
pluck golden fruit of which we have been told,
and sing the songs of childhood—stray deep
in an enchanted forest, where lifted by wind,
the hardened branches over us rise and descend:
the heaving muscles of a beast asleep.

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Ashley Anna McHugh

Ashley Anna McHugh’s debut poetry collection, Into These Knots, was the 2010 winner of The New Criterion Poetry Prize. She was the 2009 winner of the Morton Marr Poetry Prize, and her poems have appeared in Nimrod, Measure, The Journal and The Hopkins Review, as well as in other publications.

Also by Ashley Anna McHugh (see all)

• The Gate - June 24, 2018
• Her Rose Garden - June 24, 2018
• My Mother Calls from the Hospital To Say She’s Fine - June 13, 2017

Author: Ashley Anna McHugh

Ashley Anna McHugh’s debut poetry collection, Into These Knots, was the 2010 winner of The New Criterion Poetry Prize. She was the 2009 winner of the Morton Marr Poetry Prize, and her poems have appeared in Nimrod, Measure, The Journal and The Hopkins Review, as well as in other publications. View all posts by Ashley Anna McHugh