Written in November & More

by George Freek (February 2025)

Written in November
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Clouds gather, as if they
were trying to fight off
this inclement weather,
but those petulant clouds
vanish with a sudden breeze,
and the sky remains gray.
It will snow soon.
Winter is the executioner
of flowers and leaves,
but nature feels no remorse.
Ethics are a human invention,
which in our fear of death,
we apply to what happens,
or to what might have been.
Nature can never be wrong,
and in its changing moods,
it will give us no rest.
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The Unpleasant Canticles #3
–
On this starless night,
everything is motionless.
The sky is as black
as a burial chamber.
The moon is a thin slit.
In a leafless oak tree,
a heron’s nest is empty.
The family has departed,
with freedom unavailable to me.
Once I’d have tried
to find a symbol for a poem,
but I know little of herons
or of oak trees,
and I can’t really care.
They mean nothing
now to me.
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The Unpleasant Canticles #4
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Days upon days as the clouds
are caught in branches,
like words in a poem
that has no meaning.
When I stare at the sky,
uneasiness fills my mind.
Scholars in their
Different departments,
study mysteries, which change
with each new spring.
Riddles without answers
are terrifying things.
I know the sum of one plus one,
the distance to the sun,
and I think the silence of the grave
is not a pleasant repose.
As men continue to dream,
leaves fall from the trees,
but then they vanish
with the first autumn breeze.
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