Icefield Parkway: Jasper to Banff

My eyes are full of mountains and of snow. Like flats in a Palladian theatre range beyond range shifts into view

as our road advances, bends and climbs.

Almost it is too much: my European eyes,

conditioned to Alpine scale, are overwhelmed.

And still they come, peak upon peak

and glacier upon glacier. And below,

as if to reassure the traveler,

dark skirts of conifers and glistening streams,

patches of lingering snow beneath the trees

and secret turquoise lakes curled by the breeze

that scurries down the slope of rock and screes

from the twin summits, where the snowfield gleams.