Summer’s flowers are gone.
All that’s left
are decaying remains.
The trees are bare;
Yet I can recall
when leaves were there.
In my garden a hammock,
where my wife used to lie,
creaks in a bitter wind,
descending from the sky.
As winter approaches,
I talk to my cat,
to the moon and the stars.
They have nothing to say.
That is their way.
The shadow of my elm tree
falls over the hammock.
with gentle grace,
but it falls like a pall
or a monk’s cassock,
and it means
nothing, nothing at all.

George Freek’s poem “Night Thoughts” was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize.