In praise of the Winter Solstice and to drive away the dark, we offer this poem by Wendell Berry, visionary, environmental activist, farmer and one of the major literary lights in our country.
Peace of the Wild Things
by Wendell Berry
When despair grows in me
and I wake in the middle of 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 for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
