Weekend Poetry Dates are a weekly series of posts reporting on this newbie's exploration of poetry during National Poetry Month (April 2012). See all the posts here.

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Mud Lake, Ottawa, 2008

This weekend, in honour of Earth Day, I offer you a poem by Wendell Berry. His words make me swoon.

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