“A Young Mother” by Andrew Merton

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(1950)

To escape the tangle
she becomes her sewing needle

plunging through the fabric
of her sea blue blouse.

Again and again
she dives and surfaces,

a skipping stone,
a cormorant,

a marlin
at play in the frozen mists

of the North Atlantic.
Such is her joy

that for minutes, months,
whole seasons at a time,

she is able to forget
the line through her tale.

–Andrew Merton,
Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs
Accents Publishing

Andrew MertonAndrew Merton has been a political reporter and columnist for the Gloucester (Massachusetts) Times, The Boston Herald Traveler and the Boston Globe, and a contributing editor with Boston Magazine. His articles and essays have also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Ms. Magazine, Yankee Magazine and The Boston Phoenix. His book Enemies of Choice was published by Beacon Press in 1980, and his anthology In Your Own Voice: A Writer’s Reader was published by Harper Collins in 1995. His poetry has appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Powhatan Review, Paper Street, The Comstock Review, Silk Road, Third Wednesday, The American Journal of Nursing and elsewhere. He teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire.

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