At Christmas, many surprises of a good kind await a person living in a state of alertness to all that life can deliver from the hands of the natural world and from the generosity of the people around us. However, despite all that makes the going hard, we can find peace, even joy. Here are two poems that explore the necessary deep-seated spirit.
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
From Collected Poems (North Point Press) 1985
Sabbaths 1998, VII
There is a place you can go
where you are quiet,
a place of water and the light
on the water. Trees are there,
leaves, and the light
on leaves moved by air.
Birds, singing, move
among leaves, in leaf shadow.
After many years you have come
to no thought of these,
but they are themselves
your thoughts. There seems to be
little to say, less and less.
Here they are. Here you are.
Here as though gone.
None of us stays, but in the hush
where each leaf in the speech
of leaves is a sufficient syllable
the passing light finds out
surpassing freedom of its way.
— Wendell BerryFrom Given (Showemaker & Hoard) 2005
For more about Wendell Berry’s view of life, see
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