Fiammenghi

A peach has more anima
Than a mortal has of soul,
Brave Jacopo joked, punning

Ahead of execution
By the Church authorities
Who may have hesitated

To burn this monk at the stake
For his life of wickedness
But swooped on his heresy.

Doubt is a stone in the mouth
Of faith sucking luscious flesh.
Stones swallowed mistakenly

Are well-adapted as waste
And root down into night soil
To sprout more generations

Of fruitful good and evil,
Inviting pollinators
And frugivores to the feast,

But kept pits desiccated
In the sterilizing sun
Serve only contemplation,

Bone-like, homely brown fossils
Of animae mummified,
Lasting past authority.