National Poetry Month - Let Evening Come

The poet Jane Kenyon wrote so many wonderful poems. Here is one of our favorites.

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.

--

This poem is from Otherwise: New And Selected Poems, published by Graywolf Press in 1996. The poem is also available in Collected Poems, published in paperback by Graywolf Press in 2007.