Nature Narrative Poems | Examples
These Nature Narrative poems are examples of Narrative poems about Nature. These are the best examples of Narrative Nature poems written by international poets.
(“Perception and Reality Merit Badge”, 2015, original oil)
Mental Illness
Everyone with a mind is mentally ill
At least at times
And certainly to someone else.
A concerned doctor
The kind who could bestow such a label
Could say, why are you so sad
When Life is so good
You must be mentally unwell.
Why are you so happy, you must be unwell
When all around the world is in such pain.
Why are you calm and peaceful
When there is so much strife and war
You must be delusional and out of touch.
Why are you fearful and angry
You must be unstable when everybody
Just wants to get along…
Everyone is the same
Because we all have minds, minds
Which are by nature fluid and unstable
Because, that’s how they grow.
(9/6/25)
(“The Longest Journey”, 2020, original encaustic)
All That We Dream
When George Harrison sang,
“Yesterday, today was tomorrow
And tomorrow, today will be yesterday”
He was making a simple observation
On the nature of Life as a flow
We attach our momentary labels of time.
But he could also have said this applies
To all of us simultaneously in the flow
While attaching those labels as if outside,
And that this simple shift in perspective
Is the key to liberation, at least
From the burdens of this Life’s stress and strains.
Each day we do things
And when they are done, tomorrow or the next,
We are not the same person who did them.
The beauty of this is the one planning
Is never the same as the one executing
Nor the one enjoying the result.
So plan away, aim for the stars
Take that step, take the baton
On the endless journey
The endless stream of doing
As time and being flow together
Effortlessly accomplishing all that we dream.
(9/5/25)
(“Beyond the Door”, 2023, original encaustic)
The Power of Prayer
Prayer is a lot like making love
Something we do in private
And something we have to figure out
For ourselves,
Similar too in meeting a variety of needs
From solace and satisfaction to connection
And real communion in moments of grace.
But prayer is different too
Because ultimately it is not of the body
Nor really even the mind.
We bring our body and mind to prayer
As those are the tools we have to reach out
But what we receive in reply is beyond
What we can bring.
We may expect signs and words in answer
But if we actually got that
We’d end up wondering if we aren’t insane.
What we get instead isn’t something added
As much as something taken away;
A worry or fear, confusion or doubt.
Like a veil being lifted
To reveal a less obscured view
Of our true nature.
How this happens isn’t nearly as important
As simply that it does.
(9/3/25)
. THE. SCORPION AND THE FROG.
There once was a frog named Jesus
And a Scorpion named Mohammed.
One day the Scorpion named Mohammed came
to a pond he could not cross
So he asked the frog named Jesus
If he would carry the Scorpion accross the pond
Jesus the frog said yes
But only if you agree not to sting me..
Mohammed the Scorpion agreed
not to sting the frog.
So the frog generously agreed to carry
The Scorpion across the pond, but half way accross
Mohammed the Scorpion stung the frog...
Why did you do that Jesus the grog asked, we will
Both drown and die..
It is in my nature to sting and kill ...
(c) London F. BuSS.2025
(“Corpus Callosum”, 2017, original encaustic)
Reverse Osmosis of Life
It’s a two way street
The way reality exists
Divided into truth on one side
And illusion’s delusions the other,
And yet the most fascinating aspect
Is the membrane that exists between the two
A membrane of I don’t know what,
But which I’m sure the ancients had a name for,
Which divides, insulates and yet connects
And filters through cosmic osmosis
The personal and transpersonal,
Or you could say the mortal and immortal.
Sometimes I can feel the membrane at work
Seeing it even just beyond the limits of my mind’s eye
Knowing what it’s doing
As it transpires
Because I am in fact on both sides simultaneously
At least to some degree.
Everything after all is an extension
And expression of Life,
You, me, us,
In whatever forms it finds us
From refined and subtle to coarse and gross.
The other night I dreamt of being a bridge
Not a figurative one, but literally
An object with girders and cross members
Able to span a stream or gully.
It didn’t surprise me, just intrigue me
That the creative nature of the Mind
Is what it is
And in fact, is all there is.
(8/18/25)
Pick-A-Title, Vol 54 Poetry Contest // Sponsored by: Edward Ibeh
( 2nd Place )
Written: August 13, 2025
It stalks in silent corners of the mind.
A whisper, jagged, dark, and undefined.
Its claws creeps walls we dare not show,
eyes ecstatic where our hearts should glow.
It scoff on mistrust, on every hidden fear,
gnawing at the edges of what we hold dear,
A silent growl underneath the laughing sound.
A truth too fierce to face the day unbound.
Yet deep down inside the marrow of this fight.
A spark ignites a flutter of quiet light.
We don’t meet the beast with sword or shield
but with the quiet courage the heart alone can hold
It howls, it rampage, yet we will not fall,
it's shadow recoils before our inner call.
The beast is vicious, but we are more vicious still--
Adepts of the darkness by our iron will.
(“Citadel of Light Merit Badge”, 2016, original pen and ink)
The Great Debate
The great debate in buddhism
Specifically in ancient Tibet,
Was between the sudden and gradualist schools.
Even though the event is apocryphal
And never actually happened,
It’s a good and relevant story
Because it is the debate that happens to this day
Between students and teachers,
Dharma brothers and sisters
And within our own heart,
Because it concerns the nature of actual enlightenment.
You see,
The two schools view and conceive
The nature of reality,
And thus nature of ourselves,
Fundamentally differently.
The gradual school says life is like a dream
While the sudden school says it is a dream.
Disregard for a moment
The popular row row row your boat song
Which somehow inexplicably
Gave us all in the West
The sudden school lesson,
The vast majority of spiritual aspirants
Are of the gradual path
While only the very few are sudden types.
But the bottom line
Is that everyone is a gradual path type
Until they are a sudden enlightenment type.
(8/11/25)
(“Rainbow Body” detail, 2018, original encaustic)
A Journey Without A Goal
The path to enlightenment is a wondrous
And delightfully paradoxical thing!
It is complex and yet simple,
Endless and yet immediate.
The problem is it is never us who becomes enlightened,
Since enlightenment is a reunification
With what has never been divided,
And so the journey then becomes nothing but a dream.
What is found in enlightenment is what has always been,
The dharmakaya, “body of truth”,
That which is changeless
And actual.
But since this isn’t a person or identity
It means we who find it
Have never actually been separate from it
And so have never actually existed…
The questions remain;
Who/what is dreaming?
How can they/it actually ever wake up?
What then is the true nature of the dream?
(8/11/25)
The chirping birds,
The falling leaves,
Foggy,
Mystic,
Sandy shores where all roads End
The fakification of modern life
Is almost complete
As AI and disinformation
Crowd out the real and true.
If you didn’t see and do it
How can you even trust
It ever happened
Or at least how they say.
Like the old Emperor and his new robes
But in reverse
Now it’s the old calling out the lies
While the young just accept the illusion.
To the young the blurred lines will just be
What has always been
The nature of a social construct
Always in process, always under review.
What is the difference between man and woman,
Or right or wrong
Left and Right?
Whatever you want it to be.
(8/3/25)
The sky was draped in night’s black cloak,
With a sprinkle of white specks in bloom.
The yellow moon slipped into a gibbous cocoon,
As sunshine fretted in crescent-shaped kites.
But the streets today were painted in bright colours—
They cloaked the rainbow in a toga of envy.
Many danced and sang in melodious harmony,
Dressed like masquerades with neither masks nor veils.
The clouds were clear and gleamed with a faint glow,
Since the last drop of rain they’d stored was in October.
It was the music, played on hand-held instruments,
That shook off harmattan’s dryness from trees and grasses.
"This carnival is like no other,"
A lady in red and white whispered to her husband.
They, like many others, had traveled from far and wide,
To sway their hips and jiggle their feet to Motherland Africa.
The hordes of strange faces mingled with local ones—
Each year, new loves are sparked, and babies are born.
Many a mulatto grows with one half of their roots in photos,
Yet every year brings memories sweet and strong.
(“The Particle In The Wave”, 2018, original encaustic)
Down to Zero
In the great equation of Life
Everything eventually cancels out
As it naturally balances
And leaves us down to zero.
From the perspective of static
The dynamic is the illusion
From the perspective of dynamic
The static is the illusion.
Buddhism with its notion of a final Nirvana
Takes the former
Taoism with its effortlessly flowing Wu-Wei
Takes the latter.
That is the East, while in the West
This paradoxical duality is expressed
Succinctly by quantum physics
As the wave and particle nature of light.
The reality is always, of course, different
Than what we think, when we’re at zero
And left with what it means to be alive;
In work or play, depending on our view.
(7/21/25)
(“Honeybee on Apple Blossom”, 2020, original pen and ink)
Homing Bees
Up before dawn
To bring home the bees,
Last evening’s swarm
So full and feisty,
And nestled in
Their new hive
They seem contented
Distracted and without concern
That in the end
They have only
Travelled a few feet
From their old home.
(7/3/25)
(Lily, summer 2025)
Lily Bug the Mighty Pug
Lily bug the mighty pug,
All 13 months and 15 pounds of,
Just goes to show the unbridled
Power of nature
Supremely confident
Maniacally enthusiastic
Without a clue of her limits
And adorably cute.
But perhaps most importantly is a hint
Of the joy and love
That resides in the heart
Of Life, all life,
Large and small, simple and complex
Resides as part of our nature
Ready, and always eager,
To shine.
(6/16/25)
Natures’ Tune
A path shadowed
with darkened clouds
Even the perky noon
couldn’t reveal its’ paths
Entrapped in a dreaded maze
sealed from the soothing wind
With each distorted step
leading to a saddened end
I mused
staring at the timorous waters
receding away from my feet
Gawking with anxious desire
I watched the twerking wave
quietly caressing the sandy shore