Poem: “The Peace of Wild Things”

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, 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 with their light. for a time

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

“The Peace of Wild Things” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry by Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998 by Wendell berry and published and reprinted by arrangement with Counterpoint Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group (www.perseusbooks.com). All rights reserved.