Hermetic November

[RiverNotch]

Wasn't this once Hermetic November? I preferred that title -- more springy. That was, however, the only thing that didn't, or rather doesn't, need trimming.
It's the season of walls, firm
as universal laws, with the perforation
of doors opening briefly like portals.

It's the season of windows—a candle Doors/windows kinda redundant -- just perforate the walls, better associated with laws more directly, with windows. And with much of the later lights being, well, plural, candle here is best pluralized.
in the windowsill signals
that something sentient still lives inside. This line is just plain awkward.

Headlights, strange and sharp in the dark,
bore into the hulk of morning, These two lines are gold.
battling through its murky black. This one line is sort of important to the point, if you're intent on considering darkness as chaotic (although I'm not sure the association pervades, especially not in this piece), but it still seems kinda unnecessary, considering the earlier gold.

There's curtain-cloaked lamplight glowing
through windows and frosty cars in driveways, These two lines are redundant.
but people are planets of distant stars:

probabilities—inferences
from the way the light bends around them,
how it warps and curves. And here's the point. I do like referring to people as planets, but this idea feels a little too late, when considering the untrimmed piece -- and do planets move stars, just as people move cars? So you might want to rework the headlight association, even remove it.

It's reasonable to deduce Even in a [well-written] scientific paper, this is just too much.
that the movement of cars cannot be random,
that the lamplight returns bearing promise and purpose. I sorta feel that this central point can be infused more properly throughout the whole poem, such that these two lines would be unnecessary, but for this I don't really have a clue, I have no flair for endings yet.

Perhaps something like:

It's the season of walls,
of universal laws
perforated by windows.

Candles, strange and sharp in the dark,
bore into the hulk of morning
like distant stars,

the people around them planets 
warping and curving their light
into promise.

But that, of course, kinda butchered the piece.