I’m glad he’s gone my father said.

But that was the beginning

Of my obsession with garnets.

He did cure my husband in the end,

Just as I had jokingly wished

Hoped requested. Begged,

Prayed even. Haha but what if.

The pope thought I was pregnant,

He blessed my belly. I smiled in the picture

And looked exactly like McLovin,

Anyone could have seen what I actually

Was – great celestial gaylords

Were painting the ceiling –

But the pope believed McLovin

Was a woman with child.

He was so relieved. He knew at last

What he was looking at – maybe everything

He looked at was the Madonna

With a grassy green child in her arms.

When he looked at the curve

Of the earth he saw it.

He was in a wheelchair and on the verge

Of going. A poet, perhaps the next one,

Was pointed out to me.

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