Varieties of Posthumous Clarity

You or someone leads a life,
And maybe it’s a long one
Or worthy of its obits—

Notable, notorious—
And maybe you or someone
Get noted on the same day,

One in a hometown paper,
One internationally—
Obits are weird to compare.

Asking what defines the good
Human existence, well led,
Of obits is like asking

What defines a work of art
While wandering out of caves
Through auctions, museums,

And religious services.
The thing to be defined glows,
Blurs, vanishes, or shimmers

As if paralleling you,
Wandering with you, as if
It might not exist at all,

As if it asked the question,
As if small lives, like stained glass,
Were about catching some light

While the canonical life
Takes good, strong light as given,
Here to glare at other art.