North Through Stuyvesent Falls

The black and white mourners
move too fast across the cemetery,
I am afraid they'll regret how brief
was this cool Friday afternoon.

We learn from cinema
that movement is shift in perspective:
Uncle's unfocused eyes and stiff cowboy hat
over Aunt's chiffoned shoulder,

then black-vest, white-shirt Uncle in relief
against a muscular John Muir horizon,
billowed cumulus and permanent hills.
Grandmother up close is sunken and still,

reluctantly planning how to walk back
to Pats Lane through the tussocked fescue,
the wind-borne cottonwood seed
and virtually impenetrable may flies.