The Want of Peace

All goes back to the earth
and so I do not desire
pride of excess or power,
but the contentments made
by men who have had little:
the fisherman's silence
receiving the river's grace,
the gardner's musings on rows.

I lack the peace of simple things.
I am never wholly in place.
I find no peace or grace.
We sell the world to buy fire,
our way lighted by burning men,
and that has bent my mind
and made me think of darkness
and wish for the dumb life of roots.

Wendell Berry

--

A number of things have brought me back to Wendell Berry of late and passing by a collection of his poems that I bought at my first Jungian conference in San Francisco in 1983, I greeted the morning with this reflection on resting in the simple. I tend to do a lot of bouncing back and forth between what Berry mentions here; at once longing for the excitement of the world of burning men and then turning to seek the quiet of the meadow and the peace of the ocean. As we come into the snap, sizzle, flash of the 4th of July, the quiet of the morning, by contrast, calls to me and offers me rest.

At least for today.