A Lament

A Lament

Linda McCullough Moore

Edvard Munch’s The Scream
has yellow cadmium
in serious trouble,
flaking, fading
- docents in alarm -
till scientists in Oslo find
that moisture did it,
not the light. It’s hardly ever
light. But damp.

I send off for roots
of peony, three-year-olds,
prepared to bloom.
Two weeks on, they’ve
furled their leaves, gone sallow,
dried to brown spiky cigarettes.
I drench them first, then read,
“The peony resents roots damp.”
(I’m quoting here.)

Like Munch’s yellow paint.
Dried tenderly.
Like eyes now done with tears.
I guess.
(Tears, half salt, half adrenaline,
the pedants say. It makes you
want to cry for the reduction.)
What can’t be seen,
but, oh, is felt.
Absorbing.

I always thought aridity
would do for me.
But no.
It may be water. Great or small.
I’ve always thought to never
drown by never going near,
but even damp, long, strong
enough might do
sufficient harm.

Or, rain and floods,
of course.  
From far away.
It’s hard to say.

---

Linda McCullough Moore
Writer & Editor

Linda is the author of four books and more than 500 shorter works. (Beware of writers who count). Current endeavors include memorizing Psalms, reading a lot of Christian Wiman, and finally arriving on the home stretch of a recalcitrant novel.

Painting by Edvard Munch (1894)