From this Munch painting

of someone pained on a bridge,

hands held to ears, the observer

could scrape on orange

micron speck. He could

mount it on a slide, fine-tune

the fast beams that circle

under parking lots and football

fields, prodded on by-magnets’

handless shove, focus, for that

is his craft, the probe particles

(fancy calibrated stones)

to jarring graphed impact

in the paint. The search

is for the force of the scream.

But the particles’ pry is

too strong – they shock loose

the paint molecules, in sound

demonstration of the Uncertainty

Principle. The painting hangs;

Norwegian sky and harbor

pick up the scream, beam

it into the observer’s skull.

There, echoing, effect change.