"All the Women I Almost Married" - Tim Mayo

They gather at the edge of a big proscenium like a Greek
chorus keening out their melodious dirges as I prepare
to read my poems to an audience of my peers. They are
not mourning me, nor themselves, instead, they mourn
all the women I did marry. Then, one of them steps up
whom I think I recognize. She lays her hands upon me
like some blind tent healer, some traveling maiden
all gussied up in a white robe who has laid her hands
for a living every night on a different man
in a different field, outside a different town,
all over the sultry summerscape of America,
and suddenly, I hear the whip-o-wills sing as though
I have been blessed by the invisible, the feathers
of something marvelous that passes only once.