What He Knows, by Tom Lagasse

St. Francis Receiving the Stigmata, by Mateo Cerezo, the younger (Spain) 1663

​What He Knows

In prayer, with hands open and 
heart exposed, as if beseeching 
mercy, Francis lifts his eyes 
 
To the heavens.  A cherub
blows fire.  The searing flesh,  
carries the metal-staked pain 
 
Of wounds in his palms and feet, 
ripped skin, bone and tendon.  
As blood trickles from his side,
 
He will remember the tip of the spear, 
delivered not out of a soldier’s mercy 
but easy confirmation. Surrounded 
 
By darkness, he believes this is 
the knowledge of his savior, 
the cross bearer, the sacrificial lamb 
 
for the brutality people inflict upon
themselves for money or fear, rooted 
in a world trained by government, 
 
By empire, who cede violence to 
the people after training them
to willingly deliver the sentence.  
 
The crowd has washed their hands 
of radical forgiveness and chosen 
violence to extinguish the soft power 
 
Of love.  Each day, through birth, death, 
and re-birth in the liturgical season,
those wounds will remind Francis
 
Of Christ as the light of human 
potential as well as the swirling 
darkness of empire’s inhumanity.  

Tom Lagasse

Tom’s poetry has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies.  He won the 2025 E. Ethelbert Miller Poetry Prize.  He was an Artist in Residence at the Edwin Way Teale House at Trail Wood in 2024.  He writes a monthly column on creativity for The Bristol Edition and currently serves as the Poet Laureate of Bristol, CT.