“Replication of a Miracle” by Katherine Indermaur

For Owen Steinmann (2016-2017)

Sugars trickle from maples’ taut trunks, sapping

summer energy, the crystallized light of wanting

to stay alive. But what melody the drops make a man

from a pulpit always says as they leap out the spout,

percuss the bucket’s galvanized bottom. Yes, such sweet

vasculature and saccharine, this living always

toward death. He calls for recalling thinner times,

the feel of liveliness not yet stuck in the spiles

and given up. Forgetting doesn’t rid

our bones of any ache. Look—I’m trying

to hold open every leaking word all winter long

but this bark cracks, defenseless against air

and overfull. For each legible ring,

more lost. For each lived ache, a flume

of language unspun by air among us.

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Katherine Indermaur called us from Laramie, WY.

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