“Being Andrew Merton” by Andrew Merton

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lost and found by andrew mertonOver a brandy my mother told me about the first boy,
stillborn two years before I came along:

how much she and my father had wanted that child.
How, for a month, they could not speak to each other,

even look at each other, without tears.
How it took them a year to try again,

and how, later, I was given his name.
She had not meant to tell me, ever—

It just slipped out, she said. I’m sorry.
She need not have apologized.

I would have taken the job
even had I known

I was not their first choice.

-Andrew Merton,
Lost and Found
(Accents Publishing)

andrew merton from lost and found store pageAndrew Merton is a journalist, essayist, and poet. Publications in which his nonfiction has appeared include Esquire, Ms. Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Boston Magazine, and The Boston Globe.His book Enemies of Choice: The Right-To-Life Movement and Its Threat to Abortion, was published by Beacon Press in 1980. His poetry has appeared inBellevue Literary Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Rialto (U.K.), Comstock Review, Louisville Review, Vine Leaves, the American Journal of Nursing,and elsewhere. His book of poetry, Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs?, with a foreword by Charles Simic (Accents Publishing, 2012) was named Outstanding Book of Poetry for 2013–2014 by the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of New Hampshire. His website is available here.

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