Day 27: the peace of wild things

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THE PEACE OF THIS DAY!

Safe at home. We are all safe at home.

As you know if you follow this offering, we are trying to counterbalance in some small way the overriding news of the world by trying to highlight the day-to-day vitality of the natural world.

It has been said that if Henry David Thoreau was kidnapped by aliens, taken away from planet Earth for a time and brought back, he could go on a walk to look around and tell what week close to the day it was, such was his knowledge of the natural order.

This report comes to our news-desk from Betty Thompson, our eye-to-the-sky in Kansas. A photo she took that illustrates the beauty of the nature order. In this case, white pelicans (Pelecanus erythrothynchos) on Lake Afton near where she lives.

Betty also sent along a perfect poem.

The Peace of Wild Things

By Wendell Berry

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 

rest 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 I am free.

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