Night is a gift to a poet working in three lines, because so much of it is already stripped away. The detail goes first, then the colour, and what is left is shape, sound and whatever the mind supplies in the absence of light. A poem this short is doing the same subtraction.
These are the night poems from the Three Line Poetry archive: moons of every description, streetlights, insomnia, the particular quiet of a road after rain. The moon turns up more than any other object in the archive, which is either a failure of imagination or an honest report of what people look at when they cannot sleep. Each poem links back to its issue.
36 poems from the archive
Whisper me the nightfall
Damp between dusk and dawn
Panting with stars
In the desert night,
the moon stalks the dark side
of my mind.
Melting candle, light
Two flowing heartbeats, dark night
Cool to the touch, dawn
nightfall blindfolds earth
light sneaks upon moon and shines
a peek in the dark
days aren’t bright, nights are dark
the sun is burning, the moon is stark
twenty-four hours of lonely
night’s soft breath
stirs leaves, flowers white as moonlight -
magnolia dusk
Black asphalt, weak mirror,
after midnight rain–
false starlight, but mostly darkness
Moon sways tide
Cricket chirps songs of night fall
Wisdom waits for dawn
In the quietness of the night
A lone nightingale breaks its song-
The moon shimmers on the dark water.
a cloudless moonlit night
the stars brilliantly displayed
on the red carpet
we broke
the dawn & night keeps
falling
Dusk’s delicate rain
Lightly testing a new world.
In the night, thunder.
You stand in the dark
You shine against a fat moon
That tells us – "begin"
Forty nights in the desert
howling sutras to the dharma moon.
Her fullness brings me life.
the clear white moon, and the warmth inside,
after sleet storms that seemed to start and stop
just long enough, among dark willows
While Ella sings of moonlight and of blue,
her voice is amber: a streetlamp at night,
the kindling of my glass against the light.
Workers toiled all night
Still they could not heave the moon
Back into its sky
I’d abandon the luminance,
For the illuminating dark of the Moon,
For its ungenerous glow.
My heart ran off one dark night,
And the following day, I had such a fright
To find that I had lost my life.
sweltering night lit
by that bright cotton ball moon
velcroed to the sky
Cone up high touching the stars
the broken echo that sucks me in
as the absurd pendulum swings
Unfettered love joy punches
holes in the night sky
where stars flicker through.
silver waters
the midnight river is calm
a liquid moon
shadows at midnight
seduced clouds follow a breeze
turning on the stars
stars wallpaper the sky
silver moon turns on the light
dense clouds flip the switch
downtown bar streetlights
stagger against midnight sky
slur over the stars
stars sequin the sky
light obsidian darkness
Nature’s fireworks
summer midnight
the moon strikes a match
a sky of fireflies
Sleep’s ragged breath ransacks our chilly room.
Full moon snagged in the sycamore’s branches.
Red star pulses on the radio tower
He has sunflowers at night;
he wants to see the light
in thick darkness
The night forest moon
Celtic past
Legends claimed
dark cliff walls
except in the narrows of our canyon--
that moon
Tavern lamp still lit
Crescent moon and morning star
Time for one more glass
Rain slicked night
hands exchanging darkness
a pinch of warmth only fleeting
how many nights has the ocean sung
a lullaby beneath your pillow
white light of stars filling your windows
some nights there’s a moon
one wondrous whole
or a piece of the mystery
More poems by theme
From the Three Line Poetry archive