You, she, me, a triumvirate of we,
strip to the rasping sound of cricket song,
plunge triumphantly through bath-hot shallows
and seek relief in cooler warmth beyond.
Swimming, floating, treading still calm water
beneath a wheeling swarm of soaring kites,
which, like debris caught in some slow-motion
maelstrom of tornado winds, are rising,
rising, ever rising in the hazy
blue—glowing golden brown, circling, circling
in silhouette—until they are just dots.
And you, she, me; we swim on, our heads up,
watched from the shore by many wary eyes
set in the horned and ready heads of buck—
blesbok, with their white-washed faces flashing
and delicate impala standing by—
on, and back, into the shallows, now free
from clinging dust and sticky sweat, we dry
in sultry air and dress in its caress
beside the plovers and the shading trees.
