Thursday Poem - 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

(August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026)

A rare light has gone out of the world with Wendell Berry's passing. I admired him, and not just for his written work. He was a passionate advocate for the earth, for common sense, decency and compassion, for all those values that are, or ought to be, the bedrock of our existence on this dear little blue planet.