Ice Funeral

ICE FUNERAL My River Smolenka has been free of ice now for weeks, but today I saw the flat smoothly-flowing river steaming grey - Bearing remnant ice-floes from some upper tributary stream, Small, weak, lifeless, their former life a dream: An ice funeral cortege - silent slow black calm steady All floes going to die - each melts, reunited with its parent substance like souls unready. Each drops its load of dirt and cigarette butts and beer bottles - purified. Only by the stuff it has dropped is its shabby existence testified. Smolenka is their Styx - their frozen wastes will never return; Unmourned by watchers on the bridge, who turn Aside like all the rest In disinterest.