The Sunglobe

I wanted time to freeze. I wanted summer
perfectly. Every moment of waxing June,
lightning-splashed afternoons of July, and August
falling onto its sheets salty and ripe.

I would lift hours with fine tweezers, place
them on a cherrywood base, protect those days
in a globe of blown glass--to lamp the lost, my self
among the clumsy hands, stumbling minds.

It would rest within my ribcage. I would open
to some moment, random as a gray-blue butterfly,
and fill my breath with its honeysuckle air,
becoming the decibels of wren and grasshopper.

I wanted to remember that summer like some holy book,
recite it to my darker self until it knew brewing coffee,
ducks materializing from tree-lined fog, the music
of knives and spoons and glass, first star of evening.

I wanted to touch that summer shoulder,
stroke the back the sun had warmed, be
embraced by hours and feel them growing,
hold them in my belly and my arms.

A telephone will ring or a dog will bark.
The sun off a fragment of mirror will
blind you. There might be the faint trace
of a smell like something burning. Wrong
words twist into objects of torture.

I want to freeze time three breaths before
the moment before the speed of light broke.