A Simple Poem

 


















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 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.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

I don't think ahead to loss and let it color the fullness.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I am content in the here, the now.

Be. here. now. Rest in the grace of the world and be free.

Wendell Berry