after Edvard Munch’s “The Sun,” 1910-13
After a week of rain, the sudden,
sodden sun bursts through, spurs
the wet winter world into color,
and I recall Munch’s famous
fractal flares, violet steeping
cliff-sides, emerald mosses
cropping up in the thought-dead
ground and that little army
of blue-black backs breaking
the surface of the mustardy mud.
I unearth a copy for a fresh view,
to see, again, those small bodies rise,
child soldiers in the narrow pass.
They stride like my young sons,
Christmas lightsabers in fists,
toward the crystalline dazzle,
cruciform light that draws them up
to the top of the hill,
years beyond The Scream,
on the precipice of yet
another great war, and that glare,
holy grail, bombs bursting, the glory
ever luring keen schoolboys
to serve God and country.
Mary Beth Hines is the author of Winter at a Summer House (Kelsay, 2021). Her poems appear widely in literary journals, with new work forthcoming in RockPaperPoem and Whale Road Review. She also reviews book for Lightwood Magazine and other journals, with her most recent piece up at Cider Press Review. A member of the Boiler House Poets Collective, she participates in an annual Assets for Artists workshop residency at the Studios at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA).
