When I made my first lists of poems for the poetry box in 2020, this well-known piece was there. It’s taken two years to find its place, however. With an election looming and plenty of challenges to go around, many of us may be taxing our “lives with forethought of grief.” But then there’s Wendell Berry.
Yesterday, Chris and I sat on a bench on a perfect late afternoon in fall, watching the paddlers on the river and listening to a busker. A heron soared past, skimming above the water. I didn’t yet know this poem and its great heron were going into the box today, but I definitely experienced a moment of resting “in the grace of the world.”
Listen to Berry read his poem, accompanied a cool animation, here.
“I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light.”
