Spring into Poetry: Nature Poems

Final Push of the Contest

This is your last chance to enter our Spring into Poetry Contest. We are accepting submissions through 11:59 PM (PDT) on Tuesday April 30, 2024.

Writing Prompt

Looking for more poetry inspiration as we near the end of April? Consider writing a poem about your appreciation and love of nature! Write about anything from dirt, flowers, trees, to hills, mountains, oceans, and the elements, or planet earth itself. As a special challenge, write your poem in the Tyburn form. Read on to learn more about this form!

Try out Tyburn!

In San Jose we are lucky to be surrounded by beauty, especially after the rains. Take a walk around your neighborhood, a local park, a nearby trail, or have a road-trip to the beach for some inspiration. For example, here is a beautiful poem by Muriel Stuart expressing the potential of a simple seed:

The Seed-Shop by Muriel Stuart

Here in a quiet and dusty room they lie,
Faded as crumbled stone and shifting sand,
Forlorn as ashes, shriveled, scentless, dry -
Meadows and gardens running through my hand.

Dead that shall quicken at the voice of spring,
Sleepers to wake beneath June’s tempest kiss;
Though birds pass over, unremembering,
And no bee find here roses that were his.

In this brown husk a dale of hawthorn dreams;
A cedar in this narrow cell is thrust
That shall drink deeply at a century’s streams;
These lilies shall make summer on my dust.

Here in their safe and simple house of death,
Sealed in their shells, a million roses leap;
Here I can stir a garden with my breath,
And in my hand a forest lies asleep.

If you want something with more structure, challenge yourself with a Tyburn poem. This form contains six lines, consisting in a 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 9 syllable format. The first four lines, two syllables each, contains descriptive words that rhyme. The last two lines are nine syllables each, and contain the first four words as the fifth through eighth syllables. The last syllable should rhyme. Here are some examples:

Myself by Marion Gibson

Sowing,

Hoeing,

Growing,

Mowing,

Planting gardens, sowing, hoeing grounds.

Sunshine keeps all growing, mowing mounds.

Copyright 2004 Marion Gibson

I tried my hand at one as well:

Walking,

Breathing,

Dreaming,

Seeing,

Down the dirt trail walking, breathing sparse.

Clouds overhead dreaming, seeing stars.

Happy writing!

Discover More Nature Poems