The Peace of Wild Things

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When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

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I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

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I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

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And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

 

Wendell Berry

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