Lament for a Dark Autumn Morning

The sun shivers behind the steel  clouds.
A chill wind breathes winter into the heart.
The dead swirl round our feet, their last pretense at life mocking their summer exuberance.
And the year dies: dies with regret and fear of the future.
The world turns to dark.
And we try to think of light: of flaming fires,
Christmas bling proclaiming an ersatz joy
a hope in which nobody hopes, any more.
Somewhere in the shadows the hope still lives.
A light, so small, in darkness it looked into once and now knows it defeats, and defeats, and defeats until the end - and the darkness will never overcome it.
Sometimes to see one clear light, in an electric-powered, blue-phone-glow, sodium-yellow-lit world,
you have to look into the darkness.