The Peace of Wild Things

When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of 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 for their light.
For a time I rest in the grace of the world,
and am free.

-Wendell Berry