Dearly Beloved,
Here is an autumn prayer by Maren Tirabassi.
I love to watch the Fall
Posted on October 10, 2024 by Maren
I love to watch the Fall
of leaves letting go of branches
and settling to the ground
for many leaves come off with wind
and it may not be their time,
and yet I am also glad
that someone I don’t know is raking
and gathering what once held tight
to a branch I love.
And I am grateful to you –
the caregiver in assisted living
who was there
when my mother was not supposed
to die for many weeks,
to you, EMS driver at my friend’s house
but also at a stranger’s,
assisted living housekeeper
willing to put down her duster,
in order to pray five decades of the rosary
with my father-in-law,
woman on the Greyhound bus
who passes on a crossword book
to a teenager
who’s never seen one,
and the pay-for-the-car-behind-me driver
at the fast-food window.
In our days there is much of restful
falling to the ground,
and much of wind gusting,
some of autumn that colors death
and some that tastes like trick or treat,
so this poem is not about
one way of kindness or another,
but how a person’s hand is shaped
to hold a rake when one is needed.
