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      July 30, 2022Sandhog’s GranddaughterSloane Flaherty Getz

      She rises in the predawn darkness,
      the way he rose to tend his farm on Inishmore those years ago.
      Grey water, ships and fog. Fluorescence and creaking elevator.
      The sky is pink now.
      She is enveloped by a rush of warm air and noise and people;
      Crowds onto the train compressed with travelers; stares out as
      the doors shut and the station melts into
      colors and light.
      She speeds through the tunnels her grandfather built, he who dug
      the sunless shafts that streaked past her
      downturned eyes.
      She is deep under the Hudson now, the deep water that bore him
      from Ireland to the fast-approaching city.
      The smell of rain and oil and city as she dashes up the yellow steps
      two at a time,
      rhythmically nodding her head to the music filling her ears, feet
      tapping like the Morse messages he had
      trained to send to distant places.
      Her hand is on the patinated handle of the school doors,
      the light bouncing off the river blinding her eyes, the river from
      which he had stepped on wooden
      gangplanks those years ago.
      He planned to go back.
      She didn’t.

      from 2022 RYPA

      Sloane Flaherty Getz (age 15)