The Peace of Wild Things

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Wendell Berry:

 

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.