A friend was talking about the holiday blues — the peculiar combination of sadness and anxiety that somehow comes inevitably when you can’t escape songs about “the happiest time of the year.”
I thought of some lines from the poem “Let Evening Come.”
Let it come as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
The poem was written by Jane Kenyon, who died of leukemia at 47. It strikes some people as a religious poem. But the note that strikes me is the notion of comfort. Even when I’m most prone to whine, I am, when I think about it a bit, not comfortless.
I’ve said this before (Dec. 10), but I think this is an example of why poetry can be important in a certain kind of life.
Sometimes we need help finding language for the things we are feeling or thinking or experiencing. We have to borrow it. And, as we borrow, we sometimes find new ways of saying difficult things to ourselves.
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