One More Peaceful Moment || Life in the North Country || Writings Page One || The Sweet Spot
The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell Berry
When despair in 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 their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world
and am free.