Circular

Going through old files today at the office I came across a copy of a poem by Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things,” I’d tucked away years ago and then forgotten.

My choir, Calliope Women’s Chorus, sang a choral arrangement of this poem last year that brought tears to my eyes each time we sang it.

It’s an interesting reminder of how life is a circular event: we tuck away things of beauty, and they reappear years later in the form of a song, or return as we peruse an old file.

I saved “The Peace of Wild Things” because I loved it. It captures the way I sometimes feel about the state of the world: “When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the last sound in fear ….” And how I feel about the peace of wild places: “For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

Here’s a copy of this beautiful poem:

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 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

-- Mary Lilja