American Life in Poetry
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE
Nearly all of us spend too much of our lives thinking about what has happened,
or worrying about what's coming next. Very little can be done about the past
and worry is a waste of time. Here the Kentucky poet Wendell Berry gives himself
over to nature.
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.
Reprinted from "Collected Works" (North Point Press, 1985) by permission of the
author. Wendell Berry's most recent book is "Given: Poems" (Shoemaker and
Hoard, 2005). Poem copyright (c) 1985 by Wendell Berry. This weekly column is
supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of
English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept
unsolicited poetry.
|
