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The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry


Below, a photo of a painting by Vincent Van Gogh. It was taken last summmer at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and I never wrote its name down.


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

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