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