Happy Poetry Month. Friends of the Slowdown are invited to celebrate with a special offer from Poetry Magazine.

This April, an annual subscription to poetry includes a limited edition notebook. The notebook features a devious quote from Dorothy Alaska on its cover. I'm almost always lying in a poem.

And the full poem is inside. Use the notebook for your own poems, lies, and secrets.

Subscribe today at poetry magazine.org slash lying.

Each episode of The Slowdown offers you a moment of attention, a poem and reflection that shift your perspective during busy days.

In celebration of National Poetry Month, you can now receive an added benefit when you support the Slowdown, a sponsorship-free version of the podcast.

Keep your listening centered on poetry because the best moments of your day are uninterrupted.

Learn more when you make your gift at Slowdownshow.org and thank you.

I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown. I spend a lot of time in airports.

It can be a stressful place, packed with people who are overloaded with adrenaline and cortisol,

subsisting on $30 bags of almonds and $8 bottles of water. People are rushing to make their flights, or frantically finding their

way to their terminal, or struggling to get rebooked. I'm often one of them. When I'm preparing

for a multi-city book tour, I'm not nervous about reading in front of people or answering questions

or finding my way around a strange place. I'm nervous about getting where I'm going. And with

somewhat regular government shutdowns impacting TSA these days, those nerves aren't coming from

nowhere. But there are so many beautiful moments in airports if you pay attention. Parents comforting children

or occupying them with silly games. Couples excited to be going on a trip together. Teams of

uniformed student athletes traveling to or from a big game.

Outside the terminal, you might see people hugging hello or goodbye, sometimes crying, sometimes laughing.

Parents and grandparents picking up kids and swinging them around.

Couples reunited, kissing and hugging right there in the pickup lane,

with drivers maneuvering around them.

...