Thomas Ramey Watson

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

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