Those who find love in nature discover a deep and lasting freedom—and in turn, inspire others to seek that same liberation. Poetry, I believe, is one of the most powerful tools for self-expression. It helps ease despair by giving us a way to process and understand difficult emotions. Even simply reading poetry can offer a sense of connection with others who have felt the same grief, and can become a source of hope. That peace leads to freedom.
This Earth Day, I’m reminded of two poems that guide us from grief to peace, and finally to freedom and lasting solace: one by Wendell Berry, and one by Guru Nanak.
THE PEACE OF WILD THINGS
by Wendell BerryWhen 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 does not argue with despair—he admits it plainly: when despair for the world grows in me. There is no attempt to deny fear, or to outthink it. Instead, he changes his location. He goes and lies down.
That gesture matters. He does not go to fix the world. He does not even go to understand it. He goes to place his body among other bodies—the wood drake resting, the heron feeding, the water holding them both. These are not symbols at first; they are simply beings continuing their lives without the burden of imagining everything that might go wrong.
“Who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.”
This line feels almost like a diagnosis of the human condition. We suffer not only from what is, but from what may be. The mind rehearses loss before it arrives, and in doing so, lives it many times over. The wild things do not do this. They are not careless; they are complete in the moment given to them.
And something subtle happens: Berry does not become them, but he comes into their peace. The stillness of the water, the quiet continuity of their lives, begins to enter him. The stars above—“day-blind,” waiting without urgency—extend that same patience across the sky. Nothing is in a hurry to resolve itself.
“For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”
That for a time is honest and important. This is not a permanent escape from despair. It is a return, a remembering. Freedom here is not control over circumstances—it is the temporary release from the mind’s insistence on carrying everything at once. And even that brief rest is enough to restore something essential.
Pavan Guru Paani Pita
Pavaṇ gurū pāṇī piṯā māṯā ḏẖaraṯ mahaṯ.
Ḏivas rāṯ ḏue ḏāī ḏāiā kẖelai sagal jagaṯ.
Cẖangāīā buriāīā vācẖai ḏẖaram haḏūr.
Karmī āpo āpṇī ke neṛai ke ḏūr.
Jinī nām ḏẖiāiā gae maskaṯ gẖāl.
Nānak ṯe mukẖ ujle keṯī cẖẖutī nāl. ||1||
Translation
Wind is Guru, Water is Father,
and Earth, the Great Mother.
Day and night are the two caretakers
In whose lap all the world is at play.
Good deeds and bad deeds
are spoken in presence of Dharma
Through one’s action,
one can be near or far
Those who remember Satnaam
through their hard work
They have radiant faces
And spread freedom to others
In Guru Nanak’s Pavan Guru Paani Pita, the movement is both similar and deeper. Where Berry goes to nature, Guru Nanak dissolves the distance altogether.
Air is the Guru. Not like a Guru—is. The very breath we take becomes instruction. Every inhale and exhale is already a teaching, if we are attentive to it. Water is Father—not an object to be used, but a source, a giver, something we depend on in a way that is intimate and immediate. Earth is the Great Mother—not metaphorically alone, but literally the ground that holds, feeds, and receives us.
This is not poetry about nature—it is a reordering of relationship.
Day and night are described as caretakers, nurses who hold the world in their rhythm. And within that vast, continuous care, “the whole world plays.” The word play matters. Life is not framed as a burden first, but as a movement within a larger holding.
Then the gaze turns inward:
Good and bad, closeness and distance—these are not imposed from outside. They arise through our own actions, our own alignment or misalignment with this living truth. We are not separate from the order of the world; we participate in it.
And then, the line that opens into freedom:
Those who remember—who live in awareness of this presence, through effort, through living—their faces become radiant, and many are freed with them.
Freedom here is not solitary. It is not a private achievement. When one person lives in this remembrance—breathing with awareness, acting with alignment, seeing the sacred in what sustains them—their very presence begins to affect others. Freedom becomes contagious.
Where Berry rests for a time in the grace of the world, Guru Nanak points toward a life lived within that grace—moment after moment, breath after breath. One is a return. The other, a recognition. And perhaps both are needed. Perhaps more are needed. In that same spirit of finding the sacred in the everyday world, I turn to two other poets who understood nature as a doorway to inner freedom.
FROM "SONG OF MYSELF"
by Walt Whitman
I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contain’d,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.
Whitman, like Berry, admires how creatures live without anxiety or false duty. To rest in that observation is to taste freedom.
"NATURE" – POEM 668
by Emily Dickinson
“Nature” is what we see—
The Hill—the Afternoon—
Squirrel—Eclipse—the Bumble bee—
Nay—Nature is Heaven—
Nature is what we hear—
The Bobolink—the Sea—
Thunder—the Cricket—
Nay—Nature is Harmony—
Nature is what we know—
Yet have no art to say—
So impotent Our Wisdom is
To her Simplicity.
Dickinson reminds us that nature is not just seen or heard, but known—beyond words, beyond wisdom. And in that knowing, we find a harmony that sets the spirit free.
So on this Earth Day, may you find your own peace of wild things. May you rest in the grace of the world, breathe with the wind as your teacher, walk upon the earth as your mother, and carry that freedom into every life you touch.
And don't forget. Continue to sing! The purpose of life is to sing!
-Shiv
Singing oneness!
0 Comments