Sharp tormented leaves

Preoccupied with brief

Concerns, fighting against the decay

Spreading through its parts and those

Of its neighbours. Whether to stay

Or go? To cling to life or fall quietly, shuffling

Through the air, before time, startled by the wind?

The leaf’s existential angst is clearer

Than the slow pondering on life’s brevity

Of the tree, dying incrementally before

An equally slow rebirth. The tree

Endures through several lifetimes,

Twisting in agony.

The leaf meanwhile experiences,

After the clawing ferocity of casual storms,

Bubbling health, plump and green,

Before eviserating death. Is it therefore

Better to grow tall and long lived,

Enduring weather and creeping pests

Or live for only a year,

Agonised, to die in gorgeous coloured bliss?