Black Summer Is Falling

by Tran Hung

Laying out a piece of night, I sit on a wave,
surf into deep water and sky
where she’s a distant brown dot,
where she’s in my hands with the wet, cold paddle,
fingers like frozen cones,
the ancestral light casting shadows,
moon flowing at the village end and fish flopping in the fields.
She is soaked in the moonlight
and no one knows where the boat takes her.
There was once blue sky, blue sea and blue sunlight,
a blue soul that soared into yellow clouds,
a flaming train running through a rosy door.
Not a single horn for years,
only the trainline sound vibrating in her chest
on the leaf of night, in the deep water,
surfing fast, far, and smooth,
dreaming of the finger of ice that sleeps in damp hair.