When despair for the world grows for 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 dayblind stars, waiting with their light, for a time, I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Trivia: Poem recited on ER by the Alan Alda character Dr Gabe Lawrence

Horseback on Sunday morning, harvest over, we taste persimmon and wild grape, sharp sweet of summer's end. In time's maze over the fall fields, we name names that went west from here, names that rest on graves. We open a persimmon seed to find the tree that stands in promise, pale, in the seed's marrow. Geese appear high over us, pass, and the sky closes. Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds them to their way, clear, in the ancient faith: what we need is here. And we pray, not for new earth or heaven, but to be quiet in heart, and in eye clear. What we need is here.

What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.