WANTING PEACE

Poem for Today - March 24, 2014

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 when 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.

(c) Wendell Berry,

page 69 in Collected

Poems, 1957-1982

Pictures - a 
wood drake
on top - on water 
below that a 
blue heron
picture  from

National Geographic

on Line. Thanks.