Poetry

Marguerite Porete

(author of The Mirror of Simple Souls, died June 1, 1310)

It’s June when she’s burned at the stake, 
lavender blooming in French fields, lilacs 
beginning to fade, their honeyed scent 
mingling with smoke as onlookers weep 
to watch flames licking her naked flesh, 
but she doesn’t flinch, she will not recant 
even though this is the price she pays for 
believing the Divine Spark, gifted from 
birth, resides within each of us, nor does 
she know that seven hundred years will 
pass before she comes to light as the woman 
who writes that her Soul so burned in Love’s 
fiery furnace, she feels no fire, for she is fire, 
the fire of Love.