Welcome back to the Daily Poem here in the Close Reeds Podcast Network. I'm David Kern.

Today's poem is by Jane Kenyon, an American poet who lived from 1947 to 1995.

Kenyon is a beloved poet now, who was New Hampshire's Poet Laureate when she died in April of 1995 from leukemia.

She was also Donald Hall's wife, Donald Hall being another beloved American poet.

And the poem that I'm going to read today is called Let the Evening Come.

This is how it goes.

Let the light of late evening 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 the evening come. Let evening come. To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop in the oats,

to air and 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.

Like many of Jen Kenyon's poems, this is one about nature, of course, and it follows in the long tradition of pastoral poems.

What I love about this particular poem is, I mean, I love pastoral poems, but I don't want to

focus on that today.

I want to focus on that today. I want to

...