Tag Archives: “The Peace of Wild Things”

The Peace of Wild Things – a poem by Wendell Berry

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.

Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998. Published and reprinted by arrangement with Counterpoint Press.

Source: Collected Poems 1957-1982 (Counterpoint Press, 1985)

I followed the wise words of Wendell Berry and went to Pauatahanui today.

By the Inlet I found a Heron feeding….

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And not a wood drake but a solitary Black Swan.

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The Wild Things were calm and untaxed.

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The water still and beautiful.

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It was easy to breathe and calm and feel restored.

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