A short ride in the van, then the eight of us   
there in the heat—white shirtsleeves sticking,   
the women’s gloves off—fanning our faces.   
   The workers had set up a big blue tent   
      
       to help us at graveside tolerate the sun,   
    which was brutal all afternoon as if   
stationed above us, though it moved limb   
   to limb through two huge, covering elms.   

      The long processional of neighbors, friends,   
   the town’s elderly, her beauty-shop patrons,   
her club’s notables. . . The world is full of   
   prayers arrived at from afterwards, he said.   

      Look up through the trees—the hands, the leaves   
curled as in self-control or quietly hurting,   
or now open, flat-palmed, many-fine-veined,   
    and whether from heat or sadness, waving.