Floe

Duck-walking on sheets of ice, only the sky just above my lips is melting. I move forward by counting the parked cars. A bundled-up woman I knew from last winter waves at me, she is way across a slithering street. She was in service in Vietnam, she nursed, this part of her I remember only. Her weathered face underneath her mouth-covering scarf is hidden today. There is significance in this numbing landscape. The road keeps sliding forward until it forgets us.