A person is out walking after an ice storm, and everything has turned brittle. The rain has frozen on the umbrella into a solid dome, the branches sag across the path, and each step cracks loudly underfoot. The speaker's two comparisons are funny and a little uneasy: walking on eggs suggests careful, nervous steps, while an archaeological dig with a bulldozer suggests clumsy destruction of something delicate.
Then the mood shifts. The ice on the umbrella suddenly shatters, and the speaker says "my own shell drops away." That phrase suggests more than a lost coating of ice, as if the speaker has been briefly freed from some protective layer. What follows is stillness. Standing in a ring of broken shards, the speaker breathes out small clouds of fog, "in small installments." The ending is quiet, a little humble, and oddly peaceful, as though the noise and effort have stopped and the speaker is simply present in the cold.