Passing Qinghai Lake

By David Allen Sullivan

Like a stone thrown down
on this Himalayan lake
that skitter-steps towards our all-day-
and-all-night-train,

the moon creases gold divots
on snow-bound blue,
a protective amulet
from a holy lama’s neck.

My children are asleep
in each other’s arms
on the lower bunk.
My wife snores above them.

No one has to walk
on water or levitate
for there to be a miracle,
just this train’s heartbeat creaks,

this waking
to a lake on fire,
this hammered-thin
goldleaf moon

disappearing with the lake
as we make a wide turn,
and rumble higher and higher
over tundra towards Lhasa.

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David Allen Sullivan’s books include Strong-Armed Angels, Every Seed of the Pomegranate, a book of co-translation with Abbas Kadhim from the Arabic of Iraqi Adnan Al-Sayegh, Bombs Have Not Breakfasted Yet, and Black Ice. He won the Mary Ballard Chapbook poetry prize for Take Wing, and his book of poems about the year he spent as a Fulbright lecturer in China, Seed Shell Ash, is forthcoming from Salmon Pres. He teaches at Cabrillo College, where he edits the Porter Gulch Review with his students, and lives in Santa Cruz with his family.