Thedore Roethke`s poems start with his belief that the sources of our being can be found in nature. He thinks we should recover them through nature. His childhood background and hometown environment seem to have had a great effect on his works. His father, a florist, and his experience around the family greenhouse had important meaning throughout his life. He sees all living things as holy. The most minimal thins in nature can give him a profound feeling of joy. To Roethke, true meaning of being can be found only in exposing oneself naked to the mysterious quality of the life force. And he takes these lessons from the small living things as they approach their lives with innocence. When his life seems meaningless and he suffers from mental disease and fear of losing his job, he travels back to the natural world through association with the past days. The past world of plants and small animals once again come to life and gives true joy of being. When they light his dark and desolate situation, he then can accept the dark side of life, even death as a part of nature`s fertility. Accepting the forces of nature, he participates in the universal life. In his late poems he examines human civilization, placing it in juxtaposition with the natural world of small living things. The world of nature is older and wider than human civilization, it is beyond human value and human time. This paper examines 13 poems dealing with small living things throughout his collections of poems. From minimal beings to flowers and animals, all come into these poems including beetles, newts, fishes, lice, squirmers in bogs, bacterial creepers, snails, birds, worms, roses, cyclamen, lilies, leaves, fens, small breathers, grasses, bees, herons, crabs, flickers, hen, dove, otter, minnow, tendrils, lizard, mouse, geranium, cicadas, towhee...These are Roethke`s lovely diminutives. By studying them and their lives, the poet learns how to recover his original self. With love for these small living things, he senses the absolute life and the absurdity of fearing death.