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.