When despair for the world grows in me

After The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

First published in Turning Ten and other Stories of Life*, November 2025

In this wilding world as pompous weeds choke the hope of merciful folk, in which fear takes root over the carcases of buried books, fertilised with othering, I wake.

Usually I lie, uneasy, and prepare my excuses for a despair-affected day… but from a poem crafted in tribute to Grace, I remember there is another way. I flip the bedsheets from my overheating worry and welcome the cool shock of clear air. In a strange bout of sanity, I pull on comfort clothes and grab the cold car keys from their hook.

There’s a pond and I must go there.

I pack my heavy fight and anger so I can toss them into the dark pool amongst the frogs and the mosquito wrigglers and the rotting leaf litter.

When I arrive, at first there’s just the rush of stormwater through a drain—an earlier deluge had started cleaning up the greasy streets. As I sit on a slippery log beside the pond I hear the whispers of bin-chicken wings and plover barks and koala grunts, and the reeds’ dancing rustle.

There are duck discos in the hours before dawn – who knew?

I ask the ducks if they’re afraid, but they don’t reply except to utter a thanks to their Eternal Maker, and dance and dive and eat their fill from around the weeds and the reeds. It’s not ignorance; it’s trust.

I look up, and above a break in the tree canopy opens a break in the clouds, and a solitary star shines through. It winks at me from its seat in the heavenly choir stalls, beyond the present storm.

Somewhere amongst the grey clouds in my head, there is a breath, a rest, a reset. Despair has flown. Around my brow, a nest of grace, woven through with light threads of wariness.

My fight and anger have shrivelled like tea leaves. I carry them home again. I might need them another day.

*Update: Because this piece made it to the finals of the 2025 Stories of Life competition, it is now featured on their website (link above) under the Archives - "The best of 2025". It was one of my best memories from 2025, so I'll take that.