And there appeared a great wonder in heaven;
a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet,
and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.
–Revelation, 12:1

It is but an assumption—Mary, in readying herself to
die, began to cradle the earth in her feet. Remedy for
flesh and bone as fragrant as the blooms that dared to
endure in August. As in the third hour—but all the time,
more endured than imagined: white poppy, hyacinth,
dandelion. That Mary forgot not the pink of her finger
and thumb once able to fathom thorns into roses for
plucking. Stars from within the splintering of the cross.
What better to impart unto paradise but the attendance
of her eyes? The eternalness of dirt on her tongue?
For Mary knew, upon seeing the very fact of her face,
God would reap sympathy for the Heavens. How deftly
He moved the blood, the bile, the vessels: the spit. How
deftly too the Heavens misted at Mary’s composure.
That from her rib—an epiphany, of grass, soil, root, germ:
rain. So it is more than an assumption—Helen, in cupping
the sting of her husband’s suicide in her hands, beheld
Mary, but once, weeping at the altar. The beads: lovelier
than gold, shaped as recognition in the changing light.
So she may cry, my Nana says, heaved opened is the
body of a beautiful woman before her.   

– Susan Leary