Let Evening Come

This Christmas time friends in UK have been living through chemotherapy and through bereavement. They, and beloved family, have felt far far away.  Other Christmas cards have trickled in, with messages of loneliness bravely born, of sadnesses brushed off in a one line ps.  So, in the way of the dedication at a gig, this poem is for you, in celebration of your courage and of sunrises to come. You know who you are.  I wish I were there with you now.  With my warmest love.

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

Jane Kenyon