Solace

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

The flags were at half mast  in Wood's Hole today. I noticed them as I got off the ferry, coming back from a night with Laura on Martha's Vineyard.  I went down yesterday  to see her and we set off immediately to pick watercress in a hidden stream. We have done this before. We walk down a path and there below is the greenest green you have ever seen. The first green of spring.  We picked enough for a dinner salad and some for me to bring home for David.

Then we took a two hour walk through woods, past ponds, over board walks flushing out a pair of black  ducks and two  turtles, we heard the squawk of red wing blackbirds and saw a few turkeys amble by. We went across a field, crossed the road and finally strolled along the sandy beach back to her house. I put a few flat stones in my pocket and two tiny pieces of green sea glass. The sky was robin's egg blue, the Atlantic a deep slate blue. Her two 15 year old black labs came lumbering down to meet us. By now it was five o'clock. Her daughter called to tell us the news. There had been a bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. It is a place that is so familiar to me, right across from the Boston Public Library. How many times have I walked along Boylston Street?  Everything changed after that. We put on the radio to hear the news and reluctantly turned on the television even though we weren't sure we wanted visuals of this event.

One thing led to another. Her husband Whit came home, her daughter Lila came over and Sam called from Brooklyn. Are we all okay?  So many questions. So much sadness.  As the evening ended, we realized how lucky we were to have had that walk earlier. To have been in the presence of wild things before having to absorb such sad news.