Papal Visit

The pope is wandering around the planet holding people’s faces in his hands,
touching their forehands,
cradling their cheeks
for a moment treasuring them, blessing them.
He met with the man 3rd in line to be leader of the free world.
The man wept and resigned his contentious post,
as if he had been waiting for someone to tell him
You have nothing to prove, you are Beloved.
This pope does not look like he believes in original sin.
I wonder what kind of upheaval it would cause if
original sin resigned its post
in the face of so much bold treasuring of life.
A woman he doesn’t know from Eve
Runs up to him in the street.  He embraces her
And then lets her go.
She is golden in his eyes.
As she goes toward him, he sees the gold in her
and as he releases her back to the world,
she catches her reflection in his eye for a moment
and sees it too.
Now she understands what she has been.
He might declare original sin
to have been an error.
Really no one can be blamed for partaking
of knowledge,
in fact if anyone is to be blamed it would be God Themselves —
who put it all out there:
the galaxies swirling, the crisp of ripe fruit,
the tender wonders of the body
and the humans struggling to see beyond their muddle.
Like the colorblind man wearing special sunglasses
that let him see
cerulean
rose petal pink
new frog green.
And he is weeping over the color of his children’s clothes and robin egg eyes.
God might, in fact, apologize, there is so much just beyond the edge we can see,
the horizon of the universe keeps receding
and the smallest particles
seem to be made of something smaller.
The apple comes easily from the branch when it’s ripe.
No one is to blame for tasting it,
dripping with the sugar of September sun.
Hold it in your hands.

Cherish it.