Don\u2019t go in the American River, kids in our neighborhood were often told. There are branches, rocks, and an undertow you can\u2019t see. Here, read today\u2019s newspaper; another boy\u2019s drowned.<\/p>\n
We still couldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
\t 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. <\/p>\n
\tEnvisioning 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\u2019ve easily hauled you in with fireman\u2019s carry. Walking home down a busy street in my underwear, I didn\u2019t say much. <\/p>\n
Editorial note: This has been rewritten in prose from the poem originally posted January 11, 2012. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Don\u2019t go in the American River, kids in our neighborhood were often told. There are branches, rocks, and an undertow you can\u2019t see. Here, read today\u2019s newspaper; another boy\u2019s drowned. We still couldn\u2019t stay out and swam whenever we wanted, never meeting danger until mature enough to drink Friday night. The cops yelled, hey you…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,446,493,110,857],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"yoast_head":"\n