Mother's Beauty

Why is it that when you hear a man call his mother beautiful, she's already dead?

Is it perhaps the need to
glorify the dead?
To give their life purpose, the words
you choose so carefully tread

on the line between decency and
out-and-out lies --
What she wasn't in life she was in
his eyes?

Or perhaps, just as fair, she's like
a picture carefully framed?
A snapshot of a face that is
all he has to base

his opinion of beauty upon -- it's not really fair.
Because when he says beauty,
he really means youth, untouched by the
setting sun's glare.