Let Evening Come

 When I returned home today in the afternoon I cooled down with a an icy drink and AC. It was almost a hundred degrees. A tour of the garden was in my plants, but it would have to wait.  After some reading, writing, a short nap, and dinner it cooled down. I enjoyed running the open hose on pots of flowers, letting my feet get soaked.  The cooler air helped. It reminded me of this poem, one of my favorites. While this hot spell is happening I think I will chant these three words every day. Let evening come.

Let Evening Come

BY JANE KENYON

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, “Let Evening Come” from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2005 by the Estate of Jane Kenyon. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org.