I’d
heard of a swimmer,
from
you I think,
who’d
attempted
to
cross the Vaal.
As
a boy
it
had scared me;
the
river had a menace
no
number of apparently
playful
voices could quell.
A
spinning tree in its water
would
belie its murky calm,
as
would the clicking loose
of
dry grass on its bank,
or
the slight spine in the middle,
where
the ravenous current
unable
to camouflage fully
would bristle like a surfacing fish.
I
remember a ball,
barely
touching its surface,
conspiring
with river and breeze
to
drown an Afrikaans girl.
Her
father, with a Lion
in
one hand,
had
pulled her back from the brink;
I
studied that ball for some time.
I’d
heard of a swimmer,
from
you I think,
who’d
attempted
to
cross the Vaal.
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