MOTOR BOAT ON THE ZAMBESI RIVER

MOTOR BOAT ON THE ZAMBESI RIVER

The elements of river and sky are fused,

arc-welded by the sun and burnished by the heat.

No longer are water and air and fire

separate,

but part of a new dimension

recognisable only as colour and sensation.

The boat flies onwards smoothly

with only an occasional slight swaying

like a rocket ship in space.

Its as if

the silvered edge of a mirror

had expanded into a new world

a new dimension

a new element

through which we journey forever

like a fly in amber

a twist of colour in a glass marble

a creature suspended in perspex.

Its as if

a giant inverse steel ball

became our world

and we were held

by magnets at its centre

with around us nothing.

Nothing

but heat from another world

and a light of nameless colour.

Around us float banks of mirages

disembodied, detached, unreachable

land, sand, trees,

reflected reflections both ways up.

In the absence of water and sky

perhaps we travel on our heads

through rivers of aluminium air

and drown in skies of wet platinum

driven on,

not by noise,

but by vibration,

in a silence imposed on men and mirages

by the relentless deadly deaf engine.

Behind us the insubstantial metalled sheen

through which we fly

is continually cut into white rain and solid green water

but even this illusion of tangibility

slips back and dissolves into a glassy nothingness.

Copyright Ruth Hartley 1984?

On the Zambesi River between the Chongwe and Gwabi  confluences at temperatures over 100F in a speedboat after a camping weekend.