Mindfulness by Michael Fraser

Look at this day
we’ve stepped into,
a room so vast we can
only attempt to cross it.
Gone is the night chamber
we’ve abandoned, even
the land’s face we’ve
flown over and left
bathes in a different time,
licks the sea’s hem,
whose waves flickered
like a wounded candle
when we looked down
on them. Each person
we pass is also a tourist,
as in we are all day-trippers,
drifters of coincidence,
like buckets of morning
pollen released, each trifling
grain to find its sketched mate
before the last hours turn in,
all the ancient wayfarers now
crumbled like dry leaves,
their names parentheses on the
stone’s frown. Père Lachaise
cemetery is a dewdrop inside
a droplet perched on a nameless
pebble banding a boilerplate star,
and the gleam between us is
all that matters, together,
in this brittle breathing moment,
we are a language no one else
can touch. The air is a type
of door when we feel it.

— from Juniper Volume 6, Issue 1