The Grace of the World

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 our 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 to the presence of still waters.

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