Selected Poems of Wendell Berry Book

There are some poets from whom one poem is really all I needed, no matter how much of their other work I may read.
I could read my favorite Wendell Berry poem fifty or a hundred times in a row, and cry every single time. And that tells you just about everything you need to know about me. So I share it with you here.

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.