Do This One Thing Now

May 14, 2012

You Do Not Need Another Self-Help Book
by Sarah Salway

Just get up from your desk
and open the window,
keep silent until you hear three
sounds you've never heard before,
run your tongue around your mouth,
smell the air.
I tell you what, put down this book
and do this one thing now:
let your hands drift out and touch,
then drift again;
run your fingers
over rough wood, then let them fall
against your own soft skin. I met a woman once
who told me to touch her jumper,
Expensive, she said. It bobbled
under my hand so she told me
I wasn't feeling it right,
and for too long I believed her
because she said quality spoke.
I didn't see how beautiful
the world is
with its only wish
that I belong,
and how my touch,
my smell, hearing, sight,
so different from hers
is the only one that matters.  

Salway, S. (2012). You do not need: Another self-help book. Hadlow: Pindrop Press. (library)

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See also:

• ‘Winter Wood’ and ‘Intellectual Gathering’ by Kenneth White (read by Sarah Salway)
• "Are We Living in Sensory Overload or Sensory Poverty?" by Diane Ackerman, The New York Times: Opinionator