From The Selected Poems of 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.
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3 comments
honeybee says:
Sep 30, 2015
Exquisite and timely. Thank you Luke.
Alison White says:
Sep 30, 2015
Wow, yes thank you Luke. Makes me think of Psalm 131. Just to simply be and let go of feigned control. A sigh of relief for this present moment.
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Mary Oliver’s Scrambled Turtle Eggs | Mockingbird says:
Feb 8, 2017
[…] have always preferred thinking about Nature as peace-giving and not vicious. More “Peace of Wild Things,” less Grizzly Man. Nature has always been the place of retreats, of “quiet times,” of […]