(photo: Naugahyde)
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Human in an Airport
To be human is to sit cross-legged
on a Naugahyde chair at an airport-gate,
which is no gate, to know what the word
Naugahyde means, to wear a dark woolen
coat, to wear cotton jeans which owe their etymology
to Genoa, to have had some of your head's
hair tinted yellow chemically, to wear metal
ear-rings, to wear a diamond-barnacled band
on one finger, to read with great rational,
passionate concentration a book entitled
World War IV, and to mark passages with
translucent, yellow, watery ink as if you
might be personally involved in this or that
denouement of history. And to sneeze.
Hans Ostrom Copyright 2008 Hans Ostrom
