The Globe of My Mind

Late afternoon light--I want to bottle it, like fireflies,
like the white glittery snow in the snowglobe
my grandmother kept on her mantel,
souvenir from Niagra Falls and all the spoons with handles
bearing city names I'd never visit. I went
some places, as a little girl, in my imagination,
no real place so glorious as the landscapes in my mind,
the worlds I created before suppertime, standing alone
under the three deodar cedars in the front yard,
small rose-shaped cones fallen from their branches at my feet.
Always, in the stories I told myself, the princes adorned me with roses,
and the light was just so, just like it is right now, forty years later--
and I still want to keep night from ever coming, to live right in the shine,
the gleam of low sun on spring leaves, and never enter the house for dinner,
where the clatter of dishes and the rising voices and a father forking
his food, his singing voice turning to shouts as the last light left the sky.