Let me curl up with this book,

Let me fold in on myself,

Let me carve out a sliver of comfort in the corner

Of this goddamned airport

Oh to the sounds of the airport waiting to be somewhere else

To the sounds of the perpetual coming and going and the plastic dust pans sweeping

To the clatter of machinery conveying cargo, to the voices lathering unclean floors

In this indistinct place we are all loosed from ourselves, mere passengers

From the agent on the other side of the desk no more than a surname

We are all of us going places and nowhere fast

To the numbing of the reader boards and the trance-like queues

To the TSA workers with their trousers and their gloves

To the patterned carpeting and fluorescent lamps, the stanchion posts and retractable belts

Here we are, nowhere, in between: a jumble of names over the intercom unheard

A metaphor for all existence, passengers, here for a time and then gone.

Categories: poetry, writing

Tags: existentialism, pacific northwest, poem