Night
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 might 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
Nature
