"The Peace of Wild Things"
by Wendell Berry
This poem was mentioned by listener Ellen Williams as one of her favorites. Listen to Krista Tippett recite Berry's words and read along.
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.
Copyright © 1999 by Wendell Berry from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Reprinted by permission of Counterpoint.
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