Nostalgia Poems | Examples of Nostalgia Poetry

When I was a kid, I only knew the sea from a distance— from the deck of a ship, sailing from Manila to Bacolod. I’d lean against the railings, watching the water stretch limitless, wondering what it felt like to touch. It wasn’t until high school that I finally stepped into it. Waves around my legs, sand between my toes. And just like that, I fell in...

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The pavement claims ice cream from little sticky fingers. Cries echo through the air, tugging at the heartstrings of first-time parents. Turned-out pockets disarmed, everyone walks away with a smile~some wide, some forced, and some bewildered....

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noon’s furnace: asphalt shimmers; air—thick, slow— cracks open. cicadas drill through stagnant gold. a sprinkler’s hiccup-hiss: the pavement’s glow un/curls in steam. the hydrant’s shout: uncontrolled. children shriek!—a liquid burst of now, popsicle rivers bleed; knuckles—sticky, green— cling to handlebars. shadows stretch: thin, lean across chain-link. each blade of grass—laid down— bakes. but dusk? a match-strike: fireflies!— the yard exhales jasmine; stars prick the...

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Gloria Dubbins - not much of a name, but trust me on my judgment, gentle reader; in terms of Beauty, she was Hall of Fame. We’re talking – let’s see – nineteen seventy-two, but I’m the keeper of the Gloria Flame, and still to me she’s better, and more true, than all your Taylor Swifts or Amber Heards. She did the things...

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The body remembers… What the mind politely forgets. How rain once meant survival How cold once meant fear How being held... Was once the only god that mattered. ...

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LINGERING Photographs linger in my mind— faded snapshots of a backyard, the swing creaking in the breeze, the taste of lemonade, the warmth of sun-soaked afternoons. I chase those moments, but they dissolve like mist, leaving only the chill of absence, the ache of what was, and what will never be again. ©2025 Sara Etgen-Baker...

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In Biafra, when we drank from the tilting cusps of dank leaves and washed with the spittle of cassava, the sun scorched like hell. Añuruedoahu*, the oasis of war, like worldly cowrie, stagnant, yet devoid of rural fetish, calmed our nerves and built in the altar of our souls hopes of answered prayers. *A mysterious stream in the poet's village....

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Long ago, Mithila was left at this forsaken station, As the train slipped away on the wrong track, cutting all horizons. There was no return Mithila knew it, even then. This waiting was only a silent, endless sigh. In the dust-covered mirror of nostalgia, Her past flickers, bright as gleaming, Unreal in its stillness and beauty. The present? A colourless traveller That tells no...

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~ To the tune of Sam Cooke's 1960 hit, 'Wonderful World,' aka 'Don't know much about history...' ~ Don’t know squat about biology Same is true of trigonometry ...

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I lost my shoes each summer, as you should just placed them in my case and went barefoot mother said I shouldn’t, aunty said I could Except for Sunday school, of course, tut-tut. If every day were summer, which I wish I would lose my shoes, paddle in the pond and let them all be tickled by the fish; ten toes that...

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The scent of wet Earth rises a ghost from beneath the lavish bungalow. and above the high-end ceilings and chandeliers which never flicker. Nostalgia trickles down like sweat Glimpses of plastic buckets catching rain and our salty tears flood the eyes. Flashbacks strike like lightning remembering the only toy- an abandoned kite I tried to fly in rain dampens my spirit. Loud wails roar like thunder hearing the...

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In sepia tones, the echoes twist and sway, When shadows stalk the moments lost to time, A spectral dance where ghosts of youth hold sway, Their laughter mingles softly with my rhyme. Each birthday brings the weight of fleeting light, As innocence drifts gently into night; The storms of change laugh cruelly from afar, While memory rides the mist—a faded star. Oh, how...

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There is something so sad about fireworks. They're so flashy, pretty, and exciting, but as they fade it makes you feel sort of lonely. Afterall, they're nothing more than a semi-permanent spark intended to entertain for a semi-permanent moment. The people that come into our lives are a lot like the fireworks: flashy, pretty, exciting. Then we...

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Life has an odd habit of making you miss old street curbs and stop signs. The street I miss the most, though, has to be the cross street between the crab apple orchard and my friend Jacksons house. Something about that place felt infinite. And something about sometimes friends feels greater than sometimes. Would I go...

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Somewhere there’s a sunflower poking out from the corner of a concrete barrier, going unnoticed by everyone except myself. And it makes me wonder: They say when you fall in love with an artist, you can never die. But what happens when an artist falls in love? Do they continue capturing futures, or only retrospective moments? Time is an old concept—or shall I say, odd? Because I see you in soft shadows and storefront glass, in wilted flowers I forget to water,...

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