peace of wild things

 It's been a quiet weekend, but oh so lovely (aside from a transformer blowing and losing power prior to cooking breakfast).  Woke to crisp skies after a building-shaking thunderstorm last night. Today was spent mostly outside~repotting some of my balcony garden, painting a table and a long ramble in the autumn sunshine.  A lovely break from the national news.  A friend shared this poem today~thought it was too good and timely to wait until Friday.

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, "The Peace of Wild Things" from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

After gnawing off almost all of my lemon verbena, Bogart was worn out and need to lie in the sunshine for several hours.

He also discovered that 'facon' is to his liking.  As was the glass of ice water I had set on the floor while the table's paint was drying.