Gloriously green in spring and summer, these leaves
turned to bright shades of flame, lit up the fall,
and autumn's winds tumbled them to earth.
Decaying, their remnants now enrich the earth,
and winter buds fatten for next year's leaves,
which in their turn, we know, will wither and fall,
an endless cycle of growth, decline and fall.
We too decline, return at last to earth,
and memory is all our existence leaves
until we rise in new leaves, and fall again to earth.
A tritina is a sort of "sestina lite", where there are only three repeating words instead of six, and all three appear in the last single line. The theme of this one is something of a preoccupation of mine.
