The Peace of Wild Things

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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I’ve wondered for many weeks what to post as my first florilegium entry. There are poems I enjoy and easily recall, but I am not so bursting with them that I have favorite or a Top 10 or anything like that. But that’s part of the reason for this blog in the first place— to stow away these bits of beauty not only to share, but to better remember them myself, to start gathering that bouquet of wildflowers. “The Peace of Wild Things” has my placeholder while I’ve fidgeted with the design of this blog, but I didn’t think it’d be the one. Fast-forward to this week in North Carolina, I found a coffee shop built by a river, picnic tables and chairs set along the bank. I sat in a chair under sturdy-trunked trees with lithe limbs swaying over the water and watched a solitary duck float by, and I was reminded of the poem. I had conveniently brought my copy of Berry’s collected poems along with me and read it in the gentle breeze.

I sat by the river for hours, reading and in reverie, untaxed by the forethought of grief. In fact, I’m still sitting here by the river, though now at a picnic table. My hope was that I could spend some of my time in North Carolina getting this blog up and running. And I finally know how to start it.

I hope this poem comforts you as it has often done so for me.