Airports

We shuffle through the security
checks, but feel even less sure
of ourselves, patting pockets
for wallets, passports, tickets,
bored, checking the electronic board
for gate numbers, ‘Boarding’;
the names of places gleam:
the familiar, the unknown;
planes glide in, touch down;
planes roar off into clouds;
but here is another plane of mere
existence full of the empty stares
of people who’d rather be elsewhere
and stores without poems, or poets.