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.

Wendell Berry

in celebration of earth day today, i venture out to see the Portland premiere of Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry which is beautifully filmed in the land of Berry’s birth where he makes his life as a farmer, writer, poet, and environmental activist… such a lovely honoring of earth…