Poetry Month #12 Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

Peace of Wild Things

Wendell Berry is the author of more than forty books of poetry, fiction, and essays. He has farmed a hillside in his native Henry County, KY for more than forty years.

Most of Berry's work reflects his activism against war and for environmental issues.

Click here for a moving reading of this beautiful poem.

And don't miss this exceptional conversation with Bill Moyers where Bill McKibben calls Berry a "Prophet of responsibility." Click here.

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.