Reflection on The Peace of Wild Things

 In class this week we went through a handful of poems and tried to break them down as a group into “TCU speak” with the goal of understanding the language and the meaning behind it. My favorite poem that we examined was The Peace of Wild Things written by Wendell Berry.  The poem begins by detailing the narrator waking in the middle of the night, tortured by the worries of the world: “in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be”. The narrator then goes to what seems to be a lake or stream to shake off this anxiety, and feels at peace as they are surrounded by the nature around them: For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. I found the message in this poem especially interesting. I believe Berry is commenting on how we so often get tied up in the stresses of modern life that may not really be important when we take a step back. Perhaps he is also suggesting that the peace we search for through our day to day tasks in the modern world can already be found through nature, and that many of us have just become too disconnected to find it. I find this line of thought refreshing. I have often found that whatever it is that I am stressing about, be it my exams, my job, or something else, a quiet moment amongst nature can ease the mind like almost nothing else.