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.
Copyright © Sidney Beck | Year Posted 2011
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