Incident During The Writing

by Mark Halwin

I heard the sudden loud
and keening cry
of a bird last night in the hard
darkness beyond my window, and I was
a little disappointed it didn't make me
snap my gaze
to the night
and bark a curse.

It's sad not being surprisable, anymore.
It must be part of aging, to know the identity
of a surprise in the instant
it occurs (because surprises have occurred
so often they've stopped being
surprises).

A Scotsman
climbing the steep, grassy slope
beyond my window
while playing Amazing Grace
on his bagpipes
would be no more
a surprise than a circus lion prancing happily
between the pines. I've

seen it all, you understand, the Scotsman,
the lion, and more
I've lived long enough, at last,
for that.

But then,
just now,
a small
oval red leaf
leapt from a tree
and plummeted
heavy with dew
to the ground, just beyond
my window,

and I snapped my gaze
to it and watched it fall
its final eight feet or so
and dissolve
in the wilderness.

In a moment
the entire
surprising episode
was done.

I should have been surprised,
instead,
if the leaf had not fallen,
and will be surprised, indeed,
if a billion others
don't.

And I'll
be surprised, too, if the Scotsman,
should he reappear,
is not playing
Amazing Grace
on his bagpipes.

© Mark Halwin, 2003

Mark Halwin is a poet from Toronto whose work has appeared in many online venues and whose first chapbook, "The Arrival," appeared last year from Poetry Central Press.