Five Minutes explores five minutes of a life in one hundred words. Five minutes is edited by Susanna Baird, with editorial support from managing editor Maria s. picone, newsletter editor kate meen, and founding reader bobbi lerman, plus our rotating team of guest readers, who you can meet in the latest newsletteR. Five Minutes was founded in October 2020, with the Salem (Mass.)-based writing group Carrot Cake Writers supplying the journal’s first pieces. We’d love to read your five. Submit here

Dolce Far Niente

I haven’t written a single poem in months. I’ve lived humbly, reading Kahlo, Sartre and Beauvoir, pondering the power of resilience and the nature of relationships. I stroll along the Sabarmati Riverfront Promenade, a picturesque two-level walkway dotted with impeccably manicured trees and shrubs. I drool over weeping figs with arching branches, blackboard trees in full bloom, trumpet-shaped yellow elderflowers and clusters of Chinese Ixora. I rest my weary eyes upon the waning sun, and suddenly I’m seized with a strong, irresistible urge to embrace the unfolding moment as though it were the first green blade after a tedious winter.

Swati Moheet Agrawal is a poet and writer based in Mumbai, India. Her work has appeared in The Alipore Post and Celestite Poetry. [Ed. note: “Sweet doing nothing” in Italian, dolce far niente is the joy of idleness.]

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