The Peace of Wild Things: In Memoriam Wendell Berry

Photo Courtesy of Stephanie LeBlanc on Unsplash

I read my first Wendell Berry poem almost too late in life, but not quite.

His work awakened in me an unawareness of my whereabouts and the wild things—a world filled beauty and wonder, variety and diversity and provoked in me a fresh awareness of the Creator.

Let’s take for instance, the humble toad.

Not all toads are frogs although all frogs are toads, and both belong to the Animalia kingdom by order of the Anura (tailess amphibians). Did you know that more than 8000 species of frogs make their home in some slippery form or wild variation of color on every continent in the world except Antartica?

Armies of frogs in all of their still being discovered varieties play an important role in our global ecosystem. The Goliath frog (Conraua goliath), the largest living frog on Earth, weighs in at around seven pounds. The paedophryne—a micro frog—measures smaller than a human fingernail.

Frogs are slippery, colorful, and some—deadly. They jump surprising distances and play an important role in the global ecosystem. This week in the midst of our troubles and the world’s travails, I find a bit of peace in this wild thing—fashioned by the Creator who delights in the frog who is a toad, who only in some cases is a frog.

The Peace of Wild Things: by Wendell Berry

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.

(from Openings: Poems (1968)