Site icon A Hundred Falling Veils

Colette Suggests I Sit for Five Minutes Five Times a Day

 

 

 

And do nothing, she says.

I think about that as

I shuffle the kids and

make doctor appointments

and edit the pages and

 

drop off the gifts and reply

to emails and shovel the drive

and read to my daughter

and peel the carrots

and hang up the coats

 

and all that time, I imagine

sitting for five minutes.

Doing nothing.

Yeah, I should add that

to my list, I think,

 

as I open the cat food

and stack the bowls.

And there, on the shelf,

between the bowls

and the salad plates,

 

I feel the nothing

waiting for me, feel

its infinite patience,

feel how it is always here

supporting all this everything.

 

How generous it is,

I think, suddenly unable

to feel anything

but a longing for nothing,

a longing that lasts at least

 

fourteen seconds

before I remember

that call I am supposed

to make, that plant desperate

for a drink.

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