..Wild Things

Trawling through poetry websites midway through at fifteen hour stint on a night shift at work, a popular way to waste ten minutes discovering somebody new, I came across The Peace Of Wild Things by Wendell Berry, and was entirely distracted from what I was supposed to be doing. At times like these, 05:45am on a wintery Wednesday morning, when the Bean is snoozing away inside me, it's easy to forget how pregnant and afraid I am. Until the line "in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be" leaps out and wraps its gnarly fingers through the place where my gut instinct should be, and for the thousandth time since the little straight line appeared on the ASDA's own testing kit, I am frightened for what the future holds. Time to go find me some wild things. Perhaps I shall take a walk by the sea late morning, when I finish here, and plonk myself down and ponder and get a little wet.

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.

The Peace Of Wild Things— Wendell Berry