The Twenty Dollar View

Here is my simpleminded past,

the moments I can't explain

because they're mine--

impossible not to see

history writ large

in the emerald blue waters

of the twenty dollar view,

ten peaks slow caress

of digressing clouds

swept from shores

of a misremembered ocean--

I stopped believing:

never knew why

some men bled fortunes

when others paid ransoms for misery--

Bow River golden-hued larches

brush meadows more resistant to

centuries, pilgrims progress;

the three sisters Faith
Hope and Charity

framed in the lemon light

an eagle pinwheeling

into the gloam

of a fast settling night--

the one-minded obsession
to regulate

the end of the world--

where I stumbled almost

by accident

through the kicking pass

worn smooth,

a crack in the mind

a bridge over

troubled waters--

a single-minded

entanglement--

ice

carved

borealis--

I sit weep

in silence for

the silence

found.

Ken e Bujold

© 2022

Author's Note

The title refers to the picture on the back of the Canadian $20 bill for many years: a vista of the mountain peaks rising behind Lake Morraine in Banff National Park.
The opening line is a fragment found in Don DeLillo's novel Zero K

Reviews

[W. Barrett Munn]

Sounds like the recipe for contentment. Like a huge sign at the end. Silence indeed can be golden.

Winston

[JD Major]

Now that I'm submerged in this most Intriguing~Stream~of~Consciousness, how do I swim out?! :)
...I enjoy, in your Wordsmithing, revisiting long-ago family camping vacations. I can still smell the Sun-warmed, and shivering Nighttime, evergreens!
JD

[Ken e Bujold]

thanks JD, just got back from 3 weeks in Rockies, The Island and the old w***e herself the Big V, Wrote a series about the city, which I didnt leave on great terms 20 odd yrs ago, and then this more upbeat group of Rockies riffs

[JD Major]

...I can still see the RockyPeaks through the windows of the family '55 Chevy