The Beginning of The Millennium

(for J.)

I was thirteen when they announced the millennium,
in 1999 my generation still unwritten, my body growing
what would someday be my mother’s nose,
fathers hairy legs, my grandfathers religion.

I scowled at our lack of preparation for the apocalypse,
or some other immanent catastrophe,

in the oak cupboards of our North woods home,
I found only enough corn and beef to last two weeks,
five scoops of macaroni, one box of hot coca.

I clipped articles about Y2K,
preserving them in a purple journal
next to a picture of my childhood sweetheart,
and though we stole glances in homeroom,
furtive sideways gestures on the playground after lunch,
I imagined that year the calendar would pause forever in December
and until I knew the world would persist,
I couldn’t waste my time loving him,
maybe I should have.

If the world had ended when I was thirteen,
before puberty shrugged her aching shoulders
and lifted the ceiling of my stained glass world,
to teach me words like defiance and nostalgia
I would have never known the lofty insecurities
or bemoaning pleasure of adolescence
or at least, I would have missed my first kiss
three years later wearing blue jeans and lip gloss,
when again the calendar would stop, change
languages for a while, even slip off the hook
where I kept it from flying out the window.

Because when I was thirteen, the world didn’t end,
giving me ample time to taste green tea and whole wheat breads,
to drink from pottery cups, hear red birdsong and last minute suggestions, to blot out drafts of poetry and write eager letters,
to smoke cigarettes and plant lilacs.

Time to glance in the mirror and see my mother,
slip my hands through my hair and feel my father.
Time to stand next to my grandfather in his farmyard
knowing all calendars are cruel, and what he knows
I don’t, and though there is little he can tell me
that I won’t learn on my own:

I’m not ready for the world to end just yet,

Give me mildew summers and wooden bridges,
let us rave the color blueberry and tread through
cloudless unsuffering days, for with you
time is pleasant and not lucrative,
though I imagine you don’t realize
just yet how this poem is for you.

Though I write it as you sleep, and we
wander through our twenties, this is what
what I would give for more anniversaries and backseats,
filled with all and only what we own,
traveling North or East on any given Tuesday.

I give you again the beginning of the millennium,
or for what it means right now, my hand.