Graveyard Scene

by Pat Boran

The morning so cold, the earth
so utterly iced up, a child asks her mother
how the gravediggers will dig out a hole
big enough for her friend. The mother
smiles, all around us
other adults stood in their veils
of breath, the vapor–clouds
of self, reminded of how insubstantial
all of this is, the forest of dates
we have passed through
on our way to this moment
where the priest raises his hands aloft
to intone, watched over
by puzzled, shivering children
and a tangle of buxom angels
in their lingerie of stone.