The Peace of Wild Things
by Wendell BerryOriginal Language English
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.
 | -- from Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, by Wendell Berry |
<<Previous Poem | More Poems by Wendell Berry | Next Poem >>
/ Image by DeingeL /
View All Poems by Wendell Berry
Rereading my comments from a few years ago, I smile at the memory. A special moment, a special day...
My wife and I have been going for walks recently in an area called Roger's Grove. The park has a small lake with a couple of islands at its center. It is a favorite spot for Canadian geese this time of year. As we stroll around the lake we sometimes see a gray heron standing in meditative stillness among the reeds along the banks. Most recently we noticed some new visitors: one and then two bright white pelicans, looking a bit awkward in form but moving with the grace of swans upon the lake's surface.
Yesterday, we had an unexpected sight: Those two pelicans had become thirty pelicans! The lake was filled with the bright white beings! We walked around the lake in an awed daze. We watched as the birds paddled around the lake in groups, tacking together in their movements, like a synchronized drifting dance, all gliding to the left and then, with some unseen signal, all turning right again. They even dipped their heads beneath the water all at once, sometimes several times in a row, down and up and down and up, a quiet undulation rippling through the group. They seemed to revel in this sleepy synchronicity of movement beneath the warming sun.
It was a magical moment. A healing moment. An encounter with the peace of wild things.
That's just it-- these, like all living beings, experience struggle, trauma, death, yet they continue to reside in the present moment and celebrate the bliss of a sweet afternoon when it is upon them. And in this way wild things are teachers to us all.
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Recommended Books: Wendell Berry
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
| The Collected Poems of Wendell Berry, 1957-1982 | Given: Poems | Selected Poems of Wendell Berry | A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 | The Mad Farmer Poems |
| More Books >> | ||||
