WIP - a time traveler poem

A long time ago I froze
like an insect,
a praying mantis mantled
with a curse, and watched
the dirty sun, his worst eye-catcher.
For hours now he’s been still as gold and
glass, dusty as chin-height china:
thinking of his father and the fall
of the antebellum oak.
Memory of it’s sifted as if ground down
summer-soft. He used to curse,
swearing to injure time herself.

To see him now calls them in like a hanging.
All the smallest doubts, knuckle-rough
like ravens with their throaty shouts:
please us
and hold us down.