“Waiting for the Norway Maple to Die” by Hannah Faith Notess

A long bare limb emerging from a tangle

could be elegant like a Martha Graham dancer 

the unbejeweled line of modernism 

but it’s baroque, the idea 

that planted this tree, the notion 

that faster growth, thicker leaves 

were the shade we needed. We moved in

long after she was planted 

and have enjoyed her shade four years but

she’s invasive, crowding the local girls 

with her brash and dull foliage. 

I can’t help it, when I talk about her 

like this I make her sound cute 

when there are hundreds just like her, an army 

long-limbed and sturdy, everything 

you’d want in a tree except the ability 

to coexist. Next year more limbs will die off

as she gradually undresses herself, 

nakeder each year until we take her down.

Hannah Faith Notess is a poet and software product manager. Her first book of poems, The Multitude, won the Michael Waters Poetry Prize from Southern Indiana Review Press. She lives with her family in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she co-runs a poetry reading series, Yellow Chair Poetry, in her house. Learn more about her work at hannahnotess.com.