As winter winds down and daylight increases, I find some sense of peace returning. It’s so easy to get lost in the fog of worry during the dark, cold days. One thing I have discovered this winter though, that helped me find that sense of peace I seek is poetry. Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, Emily Dickinson…

I can get lost in a poem and I can find myself, a beloved child of God, in the words of a poem.

May you be blessed this day with grace that poetic words can bring and rest for a moment in God’s love.
Vikki

The Peace of Wild Things
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

Spring
Somewhere
 a black bear
   has just risen from sleep
     and is staring

down the mountain.
 All night
   in the brisk and shallow restlessness
     of early spring

I think of her,
 her four black fists
   flicking the gravel,
     her tongue

like a red fire
 touching the grass,
   the cold water.
     There is only one question:

how to love this world.
 I think of her
   rising
     like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
 the silence
   of the trees.
     Whatever else

my life is
 with its poems
   and its music
     and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
 coming
   down the mountain,
     breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her—
 her white teeth,
   her wordlessness,
     her perfect love.
        -- Mary Oliver

How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down over the collar of his
robes.
It is like the dwe of Hermom,
which falls on the mountains of Zion.
For there the Lord ordained his blessing,
life forevermore.
--Psalm 133