Anatomy of an Impasse

https://youtu.be/nbsZIzRw-v4

.

Two circumspect smiles come at me —

but more hands than faces arrive.

Their fingers come faster, inordinately –

suggesting not four hands, but five.

.

What do these hands want to do?

And how does one read human eyes?

I feel a warm madness about to ensue

that might burrow beneath their disguise,

.

if it is a disguise. I make the mistake

of assuming that truth is submerged.

Or is it that this is the innocent break

they must take so they’ll have emerged

.

to converge the point of their flight?

Five hands not four give one pause.

Homonym! Paws with claws in a fight?

Is some pact underway with a cause

.

that I will not much like? It won’t be

the first time. Won’t be the last.

I recall a small mantra: “Don’t be

the impasse.” I am the play and the cast.