Don’t go in the American River, kids in our neighborhood were often told. There are branches, rocks, and an undertow you can’t see. Here, read today’s newspaper; another boy’s drowned.

We still couldn’t stay out and swam whenever we wanted, never meeting danger until mature enough to drink Friday night. The cops yelled, hey you guys come here. A friend and I instead dropped our beers in the park and raced over the levee, churned through a long stretch of sand, and dove into the river.

The other guy was a strong swimmer in shorts, no shirt and shoes, and I was weak in the water, fully dressed, and exhausted halfway across the dark river, and despite the daze understood I needed help and called for it. The able swimmer, now far ahead, may not have heard.

Envisioning death I held my breathe and went under to rip off my water-trapping shirt and jerked back up for air before going down again to pull off shoes and pants and then flailed arms and legs in a frantic motor toward shore I reached, gasping, unable to talk ten minutes, then said, where the hell were you. Right there, my friend said, I could’ve easily hauled you in with fireman’s carry. Walking home down a busy street in my underwear, I didn’t say much.

Editorial note: This has been rewritten in prose from the poem originally posted January 11, 2012.