Watch out, He Might Blow

(Something less serious and depressing than the last post)

Watch out, he might blow

That little man in the corner over there...
I've been watching him.
The party swirls on around him,
conversations ebbing and flowing,
punctuated by the silver peals of laughter
of our hostess,
the inestimable, the esteemable, the powerful:
Maude.

And he,
the husband,
so quiet and unmoving.
The lines on his face settling deeper and deeper
into a roadmap of stillness.

His eyes, though,
so much more alive than the rest of us,
darting and fleeing around the room
to stop, to settle, to hang
so heavily on his wife
and then start the pendulum back,
touching always on
that dapper gentleman over there...
the one who hangs on our hostess
so gracefully, so tightly, so singly,
with every bon mot and every glance,
even from across the room.

There's an undercurrent of tension
here, among the frivolous joy --
And I cannot help but wonder
whether cocktail weiners can be
used as weapons of mass destruction.