Weekend poetry selections for rest, joy and meditation; we'll start with Wendell Berry's "The Peace of Wild Things"

Photo by Tj Holowaychuk

The Peace of Wild Things
When despair 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 for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
By Wendell Berry

Hills Brothers Coffee
My uncle is a small man.
In Navajo, we call him, "shidá'í," my mother's brother. He doesn't know English, but his name in the white way is Tom Jim.
He lives about a mile or so
down the road from our house. One morning he sat in the kitchen,
drinking coffee. I just came over, he said,
The store is where I'm going to. He tells me about how my mother seems to be gone
every time he comes over. Maybe she sees me coming
then runs and jumps in her car
and speeds away!
he says smiling. We both laugh - just to think of my mother
jumping in her car and speeding.

I pour him more coffee
and he spoons in sugar and cream
until it looks almost like a chocolate shake.
Then he sees the coffee can. Oh, that's that coffee with the man in a dress,
like a church man.
Ah-h, that's the one that does it for me.
Very good coffee. I sit down again and he tells me, Some coffee has no kick.
But this one is the one.
It does it good for me. I pour us both a cup
and while we wait for my mother,
his eyes crinkle with the smile and he says, Yes, ah yes. This is the very one
(putting in more sugar and cream). So I usually buy Hills Brothers Coffee.
Once or sometimes twice a day,
I drink a hot coffee and it sure does it for me.
By Luci Tapahonso 

The One Deep Inside Your Chest
Step back and watch your body, being a body.
Watch an arm move through space, watch an ankle turn.
Watch your body, as it likes things or doesn’t,
as it gets scrapes and bruises
as the skin darkens and falls into folds.

Step back to the perimeter of the theater
and watch your body on the stage.
Recede to that quiet knowing:
For now, I am associated with this body —
not inside it, or one with it —
just associated, for a time.

Casing. Only casing.
Be kind to the casing if you like — put oils
on it and nourish it and move it to keep it stronger, for a time.
Never become it. There, only suffering.

Can you feel the one deep inside your chest, who has existed forever?
Who has made a thousand journeys?
Who feels like a comet in the dark? The inner filament?

I know, no one ever told you.
I know. It wasn’t the name you learned to write at school,
but that one is you.
That one is the real you.
By Tara Mohr