I first had this Wendell Berry poem up in 2004, when I was new to blogging — and not yet a father. Older now, a papa living in a neighborhood with too much asphalt, the longing for wild places grows stronger. It is hard not to tax oneself with forethoughts of grief.
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.