Airport Paranoia

The maze of airport concourse, the convoluted hallways and stairs,
the gates extant for connecting flights, the stern challenge for the
traveler.  And it was I who, in ambulatory advance, sought
the gate for my connecting flight to Atlanta upon United
Flight 102‘s delayed landing.  (Headwinds slowed the
flight--often nature will delete precious scheduling.)

No more was I deplaned when I became one so hurried;
the 727 disgorged us sapiens to carpets tawny and slanted.
(Was this to give us all a running start to make connection?)
Perhaps it was, yet little did I know what airport aberrations
were ahead, the onion peels and pools of grease, the walls
built for subversion.  A bottleneck of folks formed due to
concourse construction--a miasma of high-lifts, materials
and white-suited maintenance men, robust and plentiful;
ergo, my haste was halted to a trickle.  Long strides
became baby steps as I, along with others, inched
like capillary blood cells, one-by-one, through
makeshift tunnels seeking our get-along,
the refreshing freedom of expedition.
Some pleasantries were exchanged
despite sighs and faces at sea.

Those long, horizontal escalators were powerless;
often was the time I would catch my breath at their
expense, but this time it was in line with a growing pattern
of airport conspiracy, plots hatched to delay, strategies duly
concocted to arrest prospects of further flight.  In the mind, images
oft fly like flutter of photo film--so you allow light to mar the negatives,
you dash the survival of such thoughts and hush the voices of persecution.

Still, lights flickered and then died altogether, and my paranoia appeared
like a blatant notification.  I felt frozen, and looked for some lighted
door from which to escape the unholy obstacle that coursed as a
turbulent conspiracy.  I longed to march proud, yet in this
struggle that was this airport’s incumbent reality, I
teetered fragile on a precipice, ready to fall.

It was the promise of further flight, it was the glimpse inside,
even if only for an instance, of slipping the surly bonds of Earth.
Modest are the willing who abide by fair solution, who temper the
not so benevolent banes of the gods, and, in peace, go with
the flow. The gate was reached with time to spare, and I
emerged unscathed in victory, at peace aboard the
747 as the good Earth below grew in vastness.


40 Lines
Writer’s Cramp
1-3-16
______

Requirements:
--ambulatory
--delete
--conspiracy
--notification