Out With the Tide by Phoebe Price

I learned to swim on Sunday mornings

Watching my Grandmother dive into the Georgia sky

As the rising sun pulled her out with the tide

The horizon was a memory she swore Alzheimers could never fade

All it took was her head tilted up to the air

She swam in the open sky

My grandmother swears she’s watched a thousand suns rise

Through the eyes of every woman who wore her maiden name.

She remembers the sky over her great grandmother's wedding

Savannah, the white, the heirloom veil

She found rice in the cracks of the church steps

And dared it to feed a bloodline

She says her cigarette burned down Chicago

That she never could kick the habit

And when she tried to stamp it out

The flame only rose higher into the rafters

Her lungs, two kerosene lamps

She was the city’s ignition

She remembers the revolution

How pen and paper built the architecture of Boston reborn

She danced on the docks of the harbor

How foreign ships carried new biology

Her laugh was the lemon in the sailors mouth

The vinegar to the rust

And when her memory drifted out with the tide

It was because when the pirate dared her to walk the plank

Twisted the sword to her throat and laughed

She jumped so they would know she could swim

And in her Sunday best, she floated on a Georgia sky

The most beautiful castaway