Ancestral Obituaries

The old type
tucks the dead
neatly in their coffins:
church member,
devoted matriarch,
model citizen gone
in gentle repose.

But we know better,
we sons and daughters
same as many
a parent gone by.
We're all
the molding
and the glass--
the colored shine,
the weird shadows.

Better, I think,
something like this:
she had her cracks,
and sometimes
the light spilled through.