Nature's Peace

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 his beauty on the water
and the heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things 
who do not tax their lives with fore-thought 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.

The Peace of Wild Things