Mapledom

Their branches beckon like the arms
  of ballerinas.         
                                     From May to October
  their leaves brighten from burgundy
  to orange to tan.
                                     In the newsworthy
  world of havoc and other
  distractions, maples create
  no headlines.
                                    Although they’ve sieved
  the wind through fifty years
  of chosen wars where millions
  died for nothing, they tell
  no time except their own.

Here in the land of Oz where
  total extinction is likely,
  the maples offer no defense
  but nonchalant irrelevance.

Samuel Hazo is the founder and director of the International Poetry Forum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and McAnulty Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at Duquesne University. The author of several books of poetry, fiction, and essays, as well as four plays, his book Just Once received the Maurice English Poetry Award in 2003. A National Book Award finalist, he was chosen the first State Poet of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania by Governor Robert Casey in 1993 and served until 2003.

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