I am a worrier. Sometimes. It's usually subterranean but every once in a while a little persistent swarm of worry bees wake me in the middle of the night and demand attention. And, in spite of the fact that I can do nothing about my kids' music lessons, or world peace, or shopping lists, or the possibility of termites infesting our house at 3:00 in the morning, I insanely indulge them. I'm going to get this poem out the next time and read those little perky worries to sleep.

The Peace of Wild Things

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.

— Wendell Berry