You shone for King George
and the Beatles and the Stones
clean and new-fangled
no lamplighter required
Every day for 60 years
patiently awaiting dusk;
your time to shine out
a beacon to home
Your warm yellow beams
threw shadows of ghost riders
and winter shoppers
into our garden and drive
Cast in iron
now cast aside;
scrapped for convenience
no more egg-yolk rays.
Metal grey, sleek, this
new circadian disruption is
streamlined, characterless
it is the cold blue light of progress.
Stephen A. Roberts
