The Peace of Wild Things

The day got of to a bad start, I found a baby badger which had been hit by a car on the lane. I dragged it onto the grass and covered it with ferns. The incident made me thoughtful about wild creatures, often poisoned, shot at, killed on the roads, their diminishing habitats and consequent extinctions. By the time I got to work I was pondering on the stricken nuclear power plants in Japan and wondering about a fairer, greener, more sustainable economic model than we have at the moment! The brain was feeling a little overloaded so I took a small detour on the way home so I could sit by my favorite lake. It was a beautiful quiet evening and I recalled a poem by Wendell Berry:

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

I arrived home feeling a lot better!