Your weekly poem: The Peace of Wild Things
🌿 A poem a day keeps the blues away…
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS—or how to be at peace and free in the world 🌿
🌻
When despair 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 for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
🌻
— Wendell Berry (August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026)
🪴 Berry passed away just three days ago, a few weeks after his 92nd birthday.
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS is probably one of his most famous poems and one of my favourites. But he was much more than just a poet. He was a novelist, an environmentalist, a small farmer who maintained his own farm for over 40 years, and an activist. He mistrusted technology and “big business”; in fact he’s said to have ploughed his fields behind Belgian draft horses, and written mostly in pencil and without electric light… He stood for values steeped in the respect of nature and his fellow human beings.
In 1968, he delivered “A Statement Against the War in Vietnam” where he said:
We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to ‘win the hearts and minds of the people’ by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the ‘truth’ of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations…. I have come to the realization that I can no longer imagine a war that I would believe to be either useful or necessary. I would be against any war.
His words ring just as true today as they did back then.
🪴 Berry was a master of saying a very great deal with very few words.
He starts his poem sharing a very common human feeling—one philosophers, theologians, existentialists, novelists, psychologists have been mulling over for centuries: despair.
🌱 “When despair 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’m a light sleeper myself—waking up a gazillion times disturbed by inadequate temperatures, bathroom breaks, the sound of rain or partying teens. But Berry talks about a different kind of waking. The kind fed by our fears, anxieties, and worries about ourselves and those we care about: our parents, partners, children, friends, colleagues, employees we lead, clients we support…. But also our job titles, the roles we carry, the games we play, the masks we wear…
Yet Berry doesn’t let us linger too long in that despair. Instead, he sweeps us toward places where we can take solace in nature’s peaceful and replenishing self.
🌱 I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
Berry is said to have had a writing cabin near a river on his farm, so it could very well be that he describes an actual place of escape he had—lucky man.
When I read his words, I imagine myself in a woodland, lying near a body of water, tall plants rustling with the wind, dragonflies passing by, birds and frogs going about their day. The sun on my skin, the breeze through my hair, and me: resting, eyes closed, cradled in nature’s arms. Quiet.
🌱 I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief.
This is one of my favourite lines in the poem. The wildlife around me invites me in, into the peace of their existence. How can they be peaceful? Because they live in the now, not in yesterday or tomorrow. Perls, founder of Gestalt therapy, said that anxiety exists in the gap between now and later. The wild things don’t burden their lives with thoughts about what might, could, or should be—they only live in the now.
🌱 I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light.
What a beautiful image. Be still, my soul. As still as the water. Alive, present, giving life to others, yet unstirred by turmoil or the unpredictability of the next moment.
And the stars—always present, always there, even when invisible to the eye, ready to be seen and discovered when the conditions are right at nightfall. So it is with our own life—like the stars, waiting for their light to unfold itself—in the Kairos of time, the moment when everything aligns.
🌱 For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
This is my other favourite line. Berry was a deeply religious man, and so the word grace for him is a word that symbolizes an unearned gift freely given by a loving God.
We don’t have to share Berry’s beliefs to allow ourselves to bask in the beauty of nature and its peaceful existence: In the grace of what’s been gifted to us freely, no strings attached. In the grace of what it means to be alive and part of a vast universe.
And in that moment, I am free—free of anxiety, of worry, of expectations, of anticipation, of unfulfilled promises and the promise of unfulfilled dreams.
I am free because, in that moment, I am who I am.
📌 When was the last time you too rested in the grace of the world and felt free?
What would it take to go where the wild things are, and come into peace?
🌱 Feel free to reach out if you’d like to explore what that kind of freedom might look like for you. I’m only one DM away—and the first conversation is always free.
🦋 Happy Sunday everyone! 🦋
With love,
Dina 🫶🏽
PS: As always, all em dashes are my own 😉.
PPS: Hi, I’m Dina—an executive and transition coach. And if you’re wondering whether how you are living your life today is how you want to spend the next ten to fifteen years of your career, let’s chat. 🤗
Resources:
- This week’s song is INTO THE MYSTIC by Van Morrison
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