Bad winter on the continent and
everywhere, people sleeping like
logs on the floor at airports, cold
in every corner. We shot in through
a weather window that sealed shut
behind us, but by then we were home
First, though, for a week we skidded round
the roads of Europe which were
slippery snakes in England, frosty
through France and Belgium,
the village streets of Germany rutted
like fields of ice because they had no budget
for plows. After Aachen we went
sideways down a roadslope
between peaks due to summer
tires and when we parked, the car
slid all the way across the hotel
lot by itself. What I have not said
is we had lost our son, so we were
not surprised that the land froze
beneath us. And it was hard to stay
stuck to it when everything in us
wanted to let go, get to where he had
gone. Slide off in whatever direction
the earth decided to send us.
