There is no dark like a night
replete with the mystery of death.
There is no truth like a fleeting wind.
There is no lover like a lonely tree.
There is no friend like a blade
of faithful grass.
There is no light like a solitary beam
from the sun.
There is no poem like an evolving earth
and no Poet like the great Grace
of Silence.
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.