Peace

"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

In the summer, a paralysing heat slows everything down. There is only a continuous chirping of crickets, a rattle of the land, that leads to augmented perception. One of those days, as I laid my head down onto the crackled earth, I felt an almost imperceptible,  subtle throbbing of the heart beneath me. A tiny up and down movement, a breath followed: "I am here. I was always here."

 ~to be continued~