Friday, September 22, 2006

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.
--Wendell Berry, Openings, 1968
(copyright, Wendell Berry, Farrar Strauss Publisher, NY, NY)

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