I just received an email that my cousin, John, is dead. He lived for 20 years with MS before cancer caught him and he died, surrounded by family, on October 28th. He was a musician, one of few in my family. He will be missed. I try very hard to remember him clearly and can't. It's been a long time since I was home.
Around this time in 2001 (which continues to fee like last year) my Grandfather died. He was the best kind of Christian, never preaching but leading by example. Lending a hand without judgment and yet a man of keen discretion as well. I remember him well, an absolute giant, a snow topped mountain with chiclets in his pocket, calling in the goats or tapping maple trees in winter, the smell of earth and hay and a life well lived, eight tall decades of mirth and stern looks and love. As I've moved from crisis of faith to crisis of doubt and back again, one thing has remained consistent. Whether I'm viewing divinity as he/she/it/they/party of 12 it makes no matter - it's always in farm fields I feel closest to it. Grandpa is why. This is the poem I offered in memory of him and now to John who I can't remember clearly yet was of the same tribe. I hope whatever heaven he gets to is filled with folk and fiddle tunes, and has a harmonica waiting for him.
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
