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
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
It is enough to sit
and watch yesterday’s rain
drop from the leaves of trees.
This river leads into a stream.
If we survive the rapids,
we still won’t reach the sea.
Winter walk in woods--
cold wind rattling through beech leaves
brings warmth to my mind.
May rain aftermath
sun through half-leafed trees
on coruscating stream
A sky without clouds
Is an ocean without fish -
The storm rushes down
A river of fears
Heading for the ocean`
Like any other silent stream
Whispering through trees
that have not yet shed their leaves.
Busy autumn wind
Sea, cloud, stream, tears
Holy drops united
Circling forever
Honeycombs of clouds
call attention to the birds,
we stare at the sea.
Quiet, wind-shaken,
still and lulling back and forth.
Single tree, sparse leaves.
wind through the forest
leaves sway and bow
moonlit prayers
shadows flash & the bird is gone
a crow blinking across sky -
blue ombre & corrugated clouds
Wind flows, as old as mother earth,
wafts through grass, flirts with leaves.
But has that vigor slowed of late?
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.
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.
spiral of rain clouds
gray on a sad horizon
of fading sunlight
flower petals fall
letting go of safe branches
to descend or fly
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.
Birds sing, soft then loud
Here I am, pick me, pick me
Spring perched in March trees
the sun will blossom
precious golden lotus,
its petals engulfing its neighbors
tides cannot efface
footprints at the ocean’s end
some work’s left to wind
laying upside down
it’s raining flowers blooming
into a calm sun-stained ocean
In spring some trees leaf out top down,
Some bottom up. By summer
It’s impossible to know which is which.
Cold coffins in icy fields.
Come May, a graveyard garden
for grandfathers in slumber.
caterpillar on passion flower
winter calls spring
chrysalis cracks into butterfly
towers of grey-black cloud
waves wind-larruped to froth
ecstatic boy on the shore
Atop the wintry tree
two songbirds sway in the wind-
wayward minstrels on stilts.
Horizon, blue sky, ocean of endless motion,
Open air and sea, inviting expansive joy,
Broadening my heart, soul and mind!
Storm-less morning starts
White clouds practising new shapes –
Elephant in sky
no water in this sea
Endless waves of yellow
corn pray for storm.
More poems by theme
From the Three Line Poetry archive