The three-line poem has always kept close company with the natural world. That is partly inheritance, since the haiku poets got there first and taught everyone to look at a branch and say nothing more than what is on it. But it is also a matter of fit. Weather changes in an instant, a bird leaves the frame, and three lines is about as long as such a thing lasts.
These poems come from across the Three Line Poetry archive: rivers and rain, crows and coastlines, the wind doing its work in the trees. Nothing here is decorative. The best of them use the landscape to say something that could not be said directly. Each links back to the issue where it first appeared.
36 poems from the archive
Short poems about trees and leaves
Most of the wind in these poems is only visible in what it does to a branch.
It is enough to sit
and watch yesterday’s rain
drop from the leaves of trees.
Whispering through trees
that have not yet shed their leaves.
Busy autumn wind
Quiet, wind-shaken,
still and lulling back and forth.
Single tree, sparse leaves.
wind through the forest
leaves sway and bow
moonlit prayers
It is no secret
We do not see the wind work
’till it rests in trees
Sunlight tumbled by tree limbs
onto the forest floor—
my loss foretold.
In spring some trees leaf out top down,
Some bottom up. By summer
It’s impossible to know which is which.
Short poems about birds and small creatures
A bird is the fastest thing in a still landscape, which makes it a natural turn for the last line.
The bird-filled woods became a new house
That never sold, the grass seed eaten
By birds, the straw carried off for nests.
Catch the wind
Sea birds glide low
Hunting the wake
shadows flash & the bird is gone
a crow blinking across sky -
blue ombre & corrugated clouds
Birds sing, soft then loud
Here I am, pick me, pick me
Spring perched in March trees
caterpillar on passion flower
winter calls spring
chrysalis cracks into butterfly
Atop the wintry tree
two songbirds sway in the wind-
wayward minstrels on stilts.
Short poems about rivers, rain and the sea
Water from the archive, from yesterday's rain on a leaf to the open ocean.
This river leads into a stream.
If we survive the rapids,
we still won’t reach the sea.
May rain aftermath
sun through half-leafed trees
on coruscating stream
A river of fears
Heading for the ocean`
Like any other silent stream
Sea, cloud, stream, tears
Holy drops united
Circling forever
Warm rain falls on me
in the city even here
it smells like the sea
Dune grass sways,
the ocean sings her song.
I am home.
A small river
Beginning of autumn
Quiet woods.
tides cannot efface
footprints at the ocean’s end
some work’s left to wind
Horizon, blue sky, ocean of endless motion,
Open air and sea, inviting expansive joy,
Broadening my heart, soul and mind!
no water in this sea
Endless waves of yellow
corn pray for storm.
Short poems about wind, clouds and storms
Weather changes faster than any other subject here, and three lines is about as long as a cloud holds one shape.
Winter walk in woods--
cold wind rattling through beech leaves
brings warmth to my mind.
A sky without clouds
Is an ocean without fish -
The storm rushes down
Honeycombs of clouds
call attention to the birds,
we stare at the sea.
Wind flows, as old as mother earth,
wafts through grass, flirts with leaves.
But has that vigor slowed of late?
spiral of rain clouds
gray on a sad horizon
of fading sunlight
towers of grey-black cloud
waves wind-larruped to froth
ecstatic boy on the shore
Storm-less morning starts
White clouds practising new shapes –
Elephant in sky
Short poems about flowers and the turning year
Blossom and falling petals, and what spring costs as well as what it gives.
Lipstick print around
My cigarette. Peach blossom
Descent through the wind.
A rake collects a pile of purple flowers
the jacaranda scattered on the sidewalk—
A cloud is changing shape, a child is smiling.
flower petals fall
letting go of safe branches
to descend or fly
the sun will blossom
precious golden lotus,
its petals engulfing its neighbors
laying upside down
it’s raining flowers blooming
into a calm sun-stained ocean
Cold coffins in icy fields.
Come May, a graveyard garden
for grandfathers in slumber.
How to write a short poem about nature
Read the poems above and a few habits show up again and again. They are worth borrowing if you are writing your own.
Start with one thing you saw. Michael Ratcliffe needs nothing more than yesterday's rain dropping from the leaves of trees. One clear image fills three lines, and a whole landscape is too much.
Let the season do some of the work. A word like "May" or "winter" sets the light and the temperature without a single adjective. It is the old haiku habit of the season word, and it still works in English.
Save a turn for the third line. In Jim Gustafson's poem, the first two lines say we cannot see the wind work, and the third finds it resting in the trees. Many of the strongest poems here keep a shift or a change of scale for the end.
Leave the feeling to the scene. Short nature poems rarely explain how the poet feels. M. Elaine Moore's "Dune grass sways, / the ocean sings her song. / I am home." trusts the beach to carry it.
If you write in three lines, send us your poems. For the shapes the archive uses, from haiku to the tercet, see the forms of three-line poetry, or browse more three-line poem examples.
More poems by theme
From the Three Line Poetry archive