Poetry has deeply inspired me most of my adult life. I had to read poetry in high school and college and it wasn’t until I found Wendell Berry that I felt like I found a kindred heart in his writing and subject matter. Here is a favorite of ours here at Wild Branch:

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.