This Morning
Jeffrey Angelson
This Morning
I woke up this morning with the feeling that I needed to go to the park.
I haven’t been to this particular park in a couple of years. There was a time when I went there every day. I was going through a difficult period in my life then, and when I was there the thoughts that troubled me seemed to evaporate.
At least that’s how it appears this morning as I think about heading back.
By coincidence, I just came across a poem that captures exactly what I’m feeling. It’s by Wendell Berry, a poet I’m only now discovering.
The Peace of Wild Things — 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.
Sometimes the world feels heavy. And sometimes something simple — a walk in the park, the sound of water, the quiet intelligence of nature — reminds us that there is another way of being here.