Everyone who knows Wendell Berry knows “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.
Two things stuck out more than ever yesterday. I think this was the first time reading that poem as a parent. So for obvious reasons, I have a new “fear of what … my children’s lives will be.” But more than anything, this stayed with me: “And I feel above me the day-blind stars / waiting for their light.”
Celebration
Brilliant, this day – a young virtuoso of a day.
Morning shadow cut by sharpest scissors,
deft hands. And every prodigy of green –
whether it’s ferns or lichens or needles
or impatient points of buds on spindly bushes –
greener than ever before. And the way the conifers
hold new cones to the light for the blessing,
a festive right, and sing the oceanic chant the wind
transcribes for them!
A day that shines in the cold
like a first-prize brass band swinging along
the street
of a coal-dusty village, wholly at odds
with the claims of reasonable gloom.
Do not forget: Your claims of gloom are reasonable.
Your neighbors’ claims of gloom are reasonable.
All those online claims of gloom are reasonable.
Your enemies’ claims of gloom, too, are reasonable.
Do not forget the need to be — do not neglect gifts that are — at odds.
John Brehm was thoughtful enough to put A. R. Ammons’ poem “Still” only a few pages away from those.
I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I’ll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:
A perfect plan for one’s identity if there ever was one, except that the whole poem is a “but though” to these humble intentions, the whole universe “is in / surfeit of glory.”
I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up
and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe…
I got rice cookin’ in the microwave
Got a three day beard I don’t plan to shave
And it’s a goofy thing but I just gotta say, hey, man
I’m doin’ alrightYeah I think I’ll make me some homemade soup
I’m feelin’ pretty good and that’s the gospel truth
It’s neither drink nor drug induced, no
I’m just doin’ alrightYeah, it’s a colorful life
that we go through
It’s neither black nor white
Nor just shades of blueAnd it’s a great day to be alive
I know the sun’s still shining
When I close my eyes
There’s some hard times in the neighborhood
But why can’t every day be just this good