Inspiration

I have long admired Wendell Berry's poem, "The Peace of Wild Things," not only for its simple and calming cadence, but its pattern of locating rest and stillness in moments of chaos and alienation. By transforming his own fear of the unknown into the graceful patience and potential of "day-blind stars," the speaker helps bring my own anxiety down a notch. In the tumultuous journey of pregnancy, birth, and new parenthood, I will constantly need reminders to find the peace in the wild moments, the stillness in the overwhelming chaos, and the grace in the unknown.

    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