The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me

and I awake in the night at the least sound

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

I go and lie down where the wood drake

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

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.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting for their light.  For a time

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

It feels to me as though we are living in perilous times.

World peace, economic stability…all seems like pipe dreams.

Hence, this poem by Wendell Berry