The Peace of Wild Things

We all capture peace where we can. In bed, just before we fall off to sleep; at the computer, as our fingers hover over the keyboard, awaiting the muse; at the kitchen table, in the morning silence, with a cup of hot coffee warming our hands. I often find peace in the natural world--in a walk in my garden, or along a sandy beach, or standing atop Mt. Whitney with all of creation arrayed before me. In the poem below, Wendell Berry captures a sense of peace in wild things near his home in Kentucky. This poem moves me deeply, especially in my desire to rest in the grace of this beautiful world.

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of 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