The farm I loved, my ancient homeplace
A families love, God given grace
Though poor then now those memories embrace
I learned to be somewhat independent, life embrace
So much to explore on that old homeplace
So lucky to be covered and blessed by God's grace
The whole family worked hard, filled with grace
There was plenty of food, nature I did embrace
That farm will always for me be my homeplace
Homeplace,
Grace
Embrace
The sun shyly peeked over the hill
as the cold air made whispers audible
and the dissipation began to rise from the dunes.
The morning breeze stirred flurries of sand from dunes
where shadows stubbornly clung to the face of the hill.
A susurrus from the cops barely audible.
Upon the bench in the lee of fickle dunes
the old brass plaque gleamed in rays cresting the hill:
an inscription of grief no longer audible.
I run my fingers over ridged hill of letters as past is audible among dunes.
The autumn day is beautiful and sweet,
and the sounds of nature ring loud and sharp;
I stand listening to a lone bird song.
His tweets, chirps and twirls an echoing song,
I am in awe of his melody sweet;
and then, the wind answers in whispers sharp.
Somewhere, a tree branch breaks with a crack sharp,
disturbing tranquility of this song;
I love nature and the hidden sounds sweet.
Let this sweet, sharp, song ever drift and float.
Written: September 14, 2026, for a contest sponsored by: Andrea Dietrich
****************
Salt stings your tears, each glistening bead of sadness.
Your breathing finds its natural rhythm, as if found
beneath the grief, a pulse untouched by innocence.
I mistook your quiet for apathy, yet innocence
remained—a fragile flame beneath the weight of sadness,
a sporadic, sparkling smile of something you had found.
Lost friends, lost years, yet somehow you found
a grace that gathered up your scattered innocence,
and gently lifted you beyond your darker sadness.
Perhaps God found innocence within your sadness.
Floating across the ridges, gentle leaf
Soaring to new heights, despite the grief
Still, soft joy providing soul’s relief
Music in all its grace, autumn’s relief
Song as bright as sunshine in each leaf
This is the moment, pouring out its grief
Across the ridges, soundless edge of grief
Quiet prayers, in His presence is relief
Trees and hills, bound by each vibrant leaf
Every leaf, despite its grief, finds relief in Fall
The dense film of depthless darkness spreads silently
as the fading spectrum of tranquil twilight descends
to disappear in the opaque cauldron of the onyx night.
Black satin stretches as the velvet swathe of night.
In halcyon horizon the last sunrays dissolve silently,
on the skyline silken shade of chalcedony descends.
The surge of astral ardor from the still sky descends
as the sprouting stars shine in the crystalline night,
adorning the sparkling sky with stellar crown silently.
Amorous moondust silently descends from sky at night.
My father was my Idol, Philosopher and Guide.
But he was a dominant person always to Control -
I had regular fight with him on inevitable Clash !
Imprisoned in childhood owing to daily Clash
Tired on conflict ! Developed personality yer he was Guide.
No way, I revolted to escape from his over -all Control !
I had to choose my own way getting rid of his Control
I had to struggle but I was just fed up on continued Clash.
Yet alll along I paid due respect to Dad as my Guide.
Dad was my Guide but I went out of his Control avoiding Clash !
September is blessed with one of the best.
You'd remember him if you ever happened to meet;
Aaron is the name of that fine, dandy dude.
I'm building a tower of mirth with my virtuous dude.
We set each brick together - hand in hand always works best.
Today is his birthday, so for a fete, we should meet.
At a park, by a beach, or on a casual street is where we may meet.
Must it be a costly, boastful retreat when frugal is ten times best?
Simple but mellifluous harmonies created by a Pisces with her Virgo dude.
September's best, blessed to meet, and he's my dude, wholeheartedly!
Every week, my dearest day
is when my buddies and I partake and play
our regular contest of cards.
What's great about codgers and cards
that would make an old duffer's day
and inspire pensioners to play?
I dunno, but I think I will peacefully play
with these jokers, and cut ups, and cards,
and these goofballs till my dying day.
It's our day - time to play cards - goodbye!
September is busting out all over,
leaves with pretty colors,
fill the cool air.
A new sweater for the cool morning air,
will keep me warm as I pick up pretty leaves over and over.
I love the red and orange colors.
Birds of many colors,
are singing as they are flying through the air,
they keep going to the bird feeder many times over.
September will be over with new colors to fill the winter's air.
Contest: September Challenge: Writing
Sponsor: Andrea Dietrich
Date: September 12th 2026
Open up your lenses and see the magic
surrounding you. Colours are like the zest
to a lemon, like the sparkle of the eyes!
Colours give life zing and zest.
They are admired by widened awestruck eyes
as the soul absorbs the depth of their magic.
Flecks of colours complete the iris of the eyes.
In many ways, they complete creative magic
and are associated with each persons zest.
Colour's magic sparkles zest through the eyes of the beholder.
Take me to the high desert where the Sierras touch the sky.
Beside my tent an ice cold creek hastily rushes by.
Above me a thousand stars mesmerize the eye.
The jagged mountains come alive as the sun rises in my eye,
Casting a reddish glow on the earth below a golden sky.
Out of nowhere a roadrunner comically passes by.
The Alabama Hills beckon from a dusty trail close by.
Two crows call noisily from a tree and look me in the eye.
After a lengthy conversation, they fly off in a cloudless sky.
I marvel at the sunset, below a crimson sky, captured by my camera's photographic eye.
Dying so slowly, burn the piled embers
Where I remember fire before your ghost
Touched the cold burial within my hearth.
Night snow on mantle, in belly; the hearth
Must fall to light still dark as the embers
Could melt once again my body; your ghost
Is dying within me when sheds your ghost
On skin; cold yet comes of the swollen hearth,
The dying's way with me in the embers,
The embers catch your ghost's gaze in the hearth.
September is a season in between,
where nature is silently changing.
Where what is grown becomes a harvest.
Where stocks of corn invite a harvest,
with longer nights and shorter days between.
To reap the fields in a season changing.
September for farmers is a time of changing.
When fields are plowed after the harvest,
as they move from fields to silos in between.
September's changing between seasons brings a harvest.
Darkness brewed over early morning skies
for not yet open were the eyes of Dawn.
Foreshadowed was the fast-approaching storm.
Thunder and lightning heralded the storm,
Rain laden Nimbus rushed across the skies,
Chosen was a graphite gown, donned by Dawn,
Rain washed were the silvered tresses of Dawn,
She brushed a tinge of blush after the storm
before greeting sunrise in pale pink skies.
Cloudy skies at Dawn were clear following the storm.
Introduction
The pleasure of reading a Tritina often lies in recognizing a word and discovering that it no longer means quite what it meant before. Each return places familiar language under new emotional and grammatical pressure. A concrete noun can become symbolic, an ordinary verb can acquire menace, and a seemingly stable image can change as the poem circles back to it. That combination of recognition and alteration makes these poems especially rewarding to read side by side.
As you browse the community poems, expect considerable variety within the shared framework. One poet may build a miniature narrative in which each recurrence marks a new stage; another may favor meditation, allowing the repeated words to gather associations rather than advance a plot. Some writers make the pattern audible and incantatory, while others conceal it within conversational syntax. Line length, punctuation, stanza movement, and tone can make the same formal pressure feel playful, mournful, obsessive, intimate, or argumentative.
Reading beyond the first example reveals how much depends on the poet's choice of recurring words. Flexible words invite shifts in grammar and meaning; highly specific words create tighter thematic focus but demand greater inventiveness. Compare several poets' approaches to see whether repetition produces continuity, conflict, escalation, or surprise. Notice, too, how the concentrated final gesture changes what came before. A single poem demonstrates one solution; a collection shows the form as an active field of choices, where shared constraints sharpen rather than erase individual voice.
Reading Guide
Read a Tritina twice if possible. On the first pass, follow its images, argument, or emotional movement without treating the poem as a puzzle. On the second, attend to what happens whenever a recurring end word returns: what has changed around it, what new grammatical role it performs, and what earlier meaning remains in the reader's memory. The most revealing comparisons are not simply between poets who handle the pattern differently, but between poems that create different kinds of necessity from repetition. As you read the community poems, consider whether the recurring language acts as an anchor, a disturbance, a refrain, or a set of ideas the speaker cannot escape.
- Track semantic change. Notice whether each end word retains one meaning or develops several. A shift from literal to figurative use can deepen the poem without announcing a turn. Ask: which poet makes the most meaningful transformation from a repeated word?
- Listen to the approach. The words immediately before an expected ending determine whether its return feels natural or forced. Syntax can glide toward the word, resist it, or suspend it for emphasis. Ask: how does each writer prepare the ear for recurrence?
- Watch stanza-to-stanza movement. Repetition can produce mere circling unless the situation, perspective, or emotional stakes change. Compare whether successive sections enlarge the scene, complicate a claim, or revise an earlier impression. Ask: what becomes newly possible after each stanza?
- Examine line length and pacing. A long, unfolding line may absorb the repeated word into speech, while a short line can expose it like a struck bell. Punctuation can accelerate the cycle or create resistance around it. Ask: where does the poem make you hurry, pause, or anticipate?
- Notice sound beyond exact rhyme. Recurring end words create strong sonic landmarks, so nearby consonants, vowels, internal echoes, and rhythmic accents matter greatly. Ask: does the surrounding music refresh the return or make it feel overly predictable?
- Test the final line. Because several charged words meet in compressed space, closure can feel revelatory, inevitable, witty, or crowded. Ask: does the ending transform the poem's accumulated language, or merely account for it?
After reading several examples, return to the poem that lingered most strongly. Identifying the exact recurrence, turn, or sound that stayed with you is a useful basis for both appreciative comments and closer comparison.
Writing Tips
Begin with a pressure that benefits from return: a memory the speaker keeps revisiting, three objects in a charged scene, competing ideas in an argument, or details whose relationships can change. A Tritina rarely comes alive when its recurring words are selected only because they are convenient. Draft toward discovery rather than merely toward completion. The framework should make the speaker reconsider the material each time a word returns, so that formal recurrence becomes psychological, narrative, or imagistic development.
- Choose end words with different kinds of energy. Consider combining a concrete image, an action or flexible term, and a word carrying emotional or conceptual weight. Three abstract nouns may make the poem airless; three highly specific objects may restrict the syntax. A varied set offers more ways to create relationships.
- Stress-test each word before drafting. Write several phrases in which the word changes grammatical function, implication, or sensory context. This is not an exercise in cleverness for its own sake. It helps you discover whether the word can recur without every line sounding like a reformulation of the first.
- Give each stanza a dramatic task. One might establish the scene, another complicate the speaker's understanding, and another expose a consequence. The tasks need not be narratively obvious, but some pressure should increase. Without development, the recurring words can make the poem feel stationary.
- Draft complete thoughts, not routes to required endings. A common beginner mistake is to build filler syntax merely to land on the next word. Instead, write the intended statement first, then reshape its syntax while preserving natural emphasis. If an end word arrives with no reason beyond compliance, readers will hear the strain.
- Use line length strategically. Longer lines can disguise the pattern and support a reflective or conversational voice; shorter lines intensify anticipation and expose every return. Varying length can be effective when it reflects emotional disturbance, but arbitrary variation may weaken the poem's pulse.
- Refresh the image field. Repeated words do not require repeated scenery. Let light, texture, weather, gesture, scale, or point of view alter their surroundings. A word such as door, for example, can remain physically present while its emotional function changes from welcome to barrier to memory.
- Manage sound around the anchors. Because the ear already recognizes the line endings, avoid surrounding every recurrence with identical rhythms or obvious rhymes unless incantation is your purpose. Internal sound, consonantal texture, and sentence cadence can provide variety while maintaining coherence.
- Compose the closing line as a consequence. Do not treat it as a storage place for words still owed to the pattern. Seek a statement, image, or vocal gesture that could only carry its full force after the preceding returns. Compression may require unusual syntax, but clarity and emotional accuracy matter more than acrobatics.
During revision, mark every recurring word and read only the phrases that lead into it. Then read the whole draft aloud without looking at the marks. Listen for unnatural inversions, predictable cadence, breathless crowding, and places where the speaker's voice disappears behind the mechanism. Finally, ask a reader where the poem changed for them. If the answer is nowhere, strengthen the stanza-level development; if the ending feels overpacked, simplify its sentence rather than explaining the poem's meaning.
Interesting Facts
- Lexical flexibility matters more than apparent simplicity. The poem's compact scale can look approachable, yet every end-word choice has lasting consequences. A word that works beautifully once may resist fresh syntax later, so early decisions exert unusual pressure on the entire draft.
- Repetition does not automatically create emphasis of the same kind. One return may soothe through familiarity, another may sound accusatory, and another may reveal obsession. Tone depends on sentence structure, context, and the speaker's changing relationship to the word.
- The form can hide in plain hearing. When sentences cross line breaks and the diction remains conversational, a reader may feel the pattern before consciously recognizing it. By contrast, short clauses and strong pauses can make each recurrence ceremonial or songlike.
- End words become memory devices. Readers carry them forward and compare each new use with previous appearances. This allows a poet to create layered meaning quickly, but it also means a vague or weakly chosen word receives repeated exposure.
- Compression can produce either intensity or congestion. The final gathering of charged language may deliver a sharp synthesis, yet a poet who tries to explain every connection can overload the close. Omission, implication, and clean syntax often give the accumulated words more resonance.
- Variation reveals the form's range. As you read the community poems, compare pieces that foreground the recurrence with those that integrate it quietly. Neither approach is inherently stronger; the crucial question is whether visibility suits the poem's voice, subject, and emotional purpose.
Popular Themes
Subject matter and structure meet most powerfully when recurrence has a reason inside the poem's imaginative world. The following themes are literary possibilities rather than claims about which subjects appear most often. Each can benefit from language that returns changed, gathering associations as the speaker revisits a scene, feeling, or question.
- Memory and loss. Repeated words can resemble details the mind cannot release. Their altered contexts show how remembrance preserves an image while changing its emotional meaning.
- Love and attachment. A small group of charged words can embody intimacy, distance, promise, and doubt. Recurrence is especially effective when affection gradually becomes more complicated rather than merely more emphatic.
- Family relationships. Objects, names, rooms, foods, or gestures can carry several generations of association. The form lets a poet return to shared details while shifting perspective between child, parent, and adult observer.
- Nature and seasonal change. Recurring natural images can remain physically recognizable while weather, light, or the observer's mood changes around them. This creates a compact way to explore cycles without reducing the poem to description.
- Conflict and war. Repetition may evoke commands, recurring danger, disputed language, or consequences that cannot be left behind. Careful variation prevents the pattern from aestheticizing suffering and instead reveals shifts in responsibility or perception.
- Humor and verbal play. Expected returns can set up comic timing, double meanings, escalating absurdity, or a final reversal. The challenge is to make the joke develop, not simply repeat the same punch line.
- Art, music, and creative practice. Motifs naturally recur in these subjects. The poem can imitate rehearsal, revision, variation, or the return of a melody while examining what changes each time an artist revisits material.
Browse the poems in this collection to compare how different writers transform similar subjects. One poet may use recurrence as reassurance, another as entrapment, and another as discovery; the theme alone does not determine the effect. Notice which end words give each treatment its particular imaginative vocabulary.
Editorial Insights
The central artistic tension in a Tritina lies between recurrence and forward motion. The reader knows that certain words will return, yet still hopes to encounter discovery rather than restatement. A technically recognizable poem can place its language correctly and still feel inert if every recurrence performs the same emotional and grammatical work. A memorable poem creates double awareness: we recognize the returning word, but we also feel that the intervening experience has changed it. Pattern supplies expectation; the poet supplies consequence.
Strong examples make the structure feel inseparable from the subject. If the speaker is grieving, arguing, remembering, rehearsing, or trying to understand a relationship, repeated language can enact the mind's inability to proceed in a straight line. If the poem is comic, the same recurrence can build timing and escalation. Editors and attentive readers notice when an end word is more than a required landing point-when it carries an image forward, reopens a question, or exposes a contradiction in the speaker's voice. They also notice the spaces between returns: fresh sensory detail, changing syntax, and stanza-level turns are what keep the poem alive.
Common weaknesses arise when the mechanism becomes more visible than the experience. Forced inversions advertise the poet's struggle to reach an ending; predictable sentence shapes flatten the music; mechanical patterning turns charged words into counters. Over-explanation is another risk, especially near the close, where a writer may try to state how all the recurring terms connect. At the opposite extreme, insufficient development leaves them related only by proximity. Revision should therefore ask not merely whether each word appears, but whether each appearance earns a distinct shade of meaning while remaining part of one coherent poem.
Individuality survives through the choices the framework cannot make: what the poet notices, where the voice hesitates, how a sentence crosses a line, which image interrupts an abstraction, and whether the ending releases or intensifies the central pressure. Some poets may expose the recurring design and use its ritual quality; others may soften it through supple syntax and understated sound. Comparing multiple community poems develops a more reliable sense of quality because it separates convention from execution. Readers begin to see that formal accuracy is only the threshold. Distinction comes from making every return feel both remembered and newly necessary.
Read, Write & Share
Read several community poems before settling on what a Tritina can sound or feel like. Compare how poets choose their recurring words, move between stanzas, shape the speaking voice, and concentrate meaning at the close. A thoughtful comment might identify a return that changed significance, a line whose rhythm sharpened anticipation, or an ending that invited rereading.
Then try composing your own poem and publish it on PoetrySoup when it is ready. Let the shared framework become a conversation with other writers rather than a test to complete. Your particular images, syntax, humor, memories, and turns of thought can add another interpretation for future readers to consider.
Collection Statistics
This collection contains 213 Tritina poems, providing many opportunities to compare how writers work with recurring end words, concentrated stanza movement, and compressed closure. Across a collection of this size, readers can encounter multiple interpretations rather than treating one example as definitive. Individual poets may follow the conventions closely, adapt them to suit a particular voice or subject, or challenge reader expectations while preserving a recognizable relationship to the form.
Tritina Categories
Read wonderful tritina poetry on the following sub-topics:
art, animals, christmas, death, dog, family, flowers, food, friendship, funny, kids, life, love, music, nature, nursery, parents, school, spring, sports, summer, war, winter
and more.
Definition | What is Tritina in Poetry?
Looking for the formal definition, structure, and history of this poetry form? Visit the Poetry Dictionary entry below. Then return to explore how PoetrySoup members bring the form to life through their own poems.