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.

He drew my attention to 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-in some slippery form or wild variation of color-are found on every continent in the world except Antartica?

New species continue to be discovered, each playing 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.

Armies of frogs exist for God-given purposes that affect us and our world whether we realize it or not. Somehow I find a bit of peace in this wild thing today.

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)