The Peace of Wild Things
Newly returned from a long road trip with my family to NYC and NC and points between, my head was full of thoughts around the sorrow of empty nests, and the beauty of exuberant Spring in the South, and embracing change, and honoring the aging body (long hours in a car being the antithesis of this). But soon after coming home, we were hit with two devastating news stories, in Baltimore and Nepal. I find myself speechless. The world is loud right now with news and commentary around both events, and I am simultaneously compelled to attend, but I also crave refuge.
To Nepal, I donated my small amount of money, a pitiful offering but it makes me feel less hopeless and sorrowful. The other has me hoping that the recent peace will hold, and that the whole mess might give rise to reform of our criminal justice system, investment in our cities, better funding for education and honest soul searching of some police departments. Perhaps it’s the juxtaposition of the two that has me looking for solace in poetry.
The poem below is one I have cherished for a very, very long time, so I’d like to share it. And I hope that it brings you, as it brings me, deep peace.
The Peace of Wild Things
By 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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