National Poetry Month 2026

This year National Poetry Month celebrated in the US and Canada has a theme close to the heart of nature lovers: Land and Sea.

Everybody is a poet at heart. This month is a time to let the inspiration flow with words that invite vivid imagery and evoke feelings of connection. It is a reminder that we are creative creatures and that creativity is sometimes submerged under ebb and flow of our daily lives.

Take a moment to slow down and get creative. To help you get started, the following excerpts from nature poems can prompt you to reimagine your own nature experiences.

Nature poetry is a deep eco-therapy exercise. It is individualistic, while at the same time speaks to the feelings that all humans can resonate with when immersed in nature.

Excerpt from:

Walking the Land

Because I was terrified, I learned nothing.
I had stepped in a papery nest of ground wasps:
a hateful swarm of them
wreathed up around me and writhed
and sang wordless rage.
One stung me on the neck
and I think I was shocked
more than I was hurt:
afraid of moving even an inch
because that was what the world had become.
I wonder if its frantic sting
was death for the insect whose mind was all red.
I don’t know my mind
so I’m making up a story:
whistling past a graveyard.
Something about a goose,
forever honking and charging, flogging, flying.
My grandfather there
and muscadines in the Georgia heat.

Paul Guest

(This poem originally appeared in You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World.)

Full poem as it was published before 1925

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea’s face, and a gray dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way, where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

John Masefield

Excerpt from:

Sea Virus

I knew I should never have gone below
but I did, and the fug of bilges and wood
caught me aback. The sheets of my heart
snapped taut to breaking, as a gale
stronger than longing filled the sail
inside me. To be shot of land
and its wood smoke! To feel the keel cold in a current!

© 2007, Gwyneth Lewis, Wale’s first Poet Laureate. It is rare to find a nature poem composed by a woman about the sea.

Now it’s your turn to let the words flow. A haiku, villanelle, or ode. Tell the world about your abode. Share excerpts from your nature inspired land and sea poems in the comments below.