The Peace of Wild Things

by Wendell Berry,   born 1934-

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.