Wednesday Words - Wendell Berry

This week's Wednesday Words celebrates the 79th birthday of one of my favorite writers, Wendell Berry. I'm headed up to the North Shore of Lake Superior for a few days of camping. Here is a perfect poem for my trip.

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, "The Peace of Wild Things," from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry. Copyright © 1998.