The /fɑːl/

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 from 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.