Psalm of the Autumn Homecoming

 

Every year with the approach of All Saints Day, I am prompted to reflect on death; remembering the autumns when my parents died - both in late October, Inez in 1976 and Arnold in 1991.  Judy’s parents also died in the autumnal season, Bina shortly after All Saints in 2019, Kermit in October 2003 and Paul in November 1974.  

And just days ago our friend and neighbor Bill Bottorf died.  He was surrounded by his family, much like it was for us when dad died forty-eight years ago.  At Bill’s funeral this beautiful psalm poem was read - words that caused me to ponder the memory of these saints who have gone before and the meaning of re-membering.

Brisk is the breeze of autumn-tide

Which sweeps in its path

Crowds of leaves from countless trees

Collecting them in amber-colored communities

To share bright memories of the summer sun.

 

Fall is homecoming time,

A reunion and return to remember

And so, to re-member what has been dis-membered

By the choice of different pathways

Or severed by the sharp knife of time.

“Dust we are and to dust we shall return”,

Sing orange-brown leaves,

As they circle-dance and cloister

In colonies of the dead.

Crumbled and crushed in time’s crucible

Stroked and soaked by the rain’s wet fingers

We shall once again become rich soil

The stuff of Earth’s dark flesh.

Autumn wind, dance master of fallen leaves,

Sing to me of my reunion

My re-memberment and great homecoming

My return to the luminous flesh of God.

 

From Prayers for the Planetary Pilgrim by Edward Hays