Duo Do-Over

by C.B. Anderson

If you should ask a mime
the time of day
or how it’s going, say,
then hands like semaphores
and moves sublime as Fred
Astaire’s will furnish clues
regarding words unsaid,
those orbs of yours
attuned to breaking news.

Detecting lies
in theater or dance
is chancy—no surprise;
to naked eyes that hear,
a fluid motion will
express no less
a cogent fiction than
does fluent diction to
a mesmerized tin ear.

Your thoughts can easily
deceive themselves,
their meager selvage hemmed
without a trace of will
to disbelieve.  The pace
of thimble-dodging needles
defeats your skill
to bind the nimble shins
of any Ginger Rogers.