Back in early May, I visited the Palouse Falls waterfall on the Columbia Plateau, a high desert or scablands, in the State of Washington. I was awed by the unique landscape there, especially miles and miles of purple vetch flowers on the hillside and the magnificent fall itself. The following poems are recounts of my visit.
Visit A Waterfall In The Desert
“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.” (*)
Another reason: there's too much hustle and bustle in the city.
Sometimes I want to get away.
On a May day I did happily.
The empty roads led me to the heart of the desert.
Blooming vetches blanketed the hillside,
putting up a show with bright purple on a yellow background.
The land wore a Chinese emperor's dragon gown.
Downy tufts filled the shrub-steppe's dreams
that were rarely wet.
Wheat fields were just plowed.
Dirt and pebbles were fresh
but not new under the Sun.
Dust devils erupted here and there,
spinning, stirring up time's ashes.
The waterfall was milk white by the cliff,
as if the Milky Way jumped down in a sky dive.
It then re-emerged from the bottom of the canyon,
like the past's returning.
Tribes and their tents are nowhere to be found.
On the waves who are wandering around?
Light and shadow, day and night,
are the only and abound.
【七律】往訪大漠中瀑布
昔辭都市赴荒漠，五月雲英滿路開。
原上麥田才動土，風中沙柱盡成灰。
銀河疑向崖前落，歲月驚從穀底回。
部落帳營何處是，光陰波上獨徘徊。
(© September 16, 2023, godog)
(*) Quoted from W.B.Yeats's poem 《The Stolen Child》.
