Nothing happened, really, 
in the way we thought it might.
Airplanes didn't drop out of the sky,
no shooting stars arched across
the heavens in expository ecstacy,
and none of the babies born
at the stroke of twelve
seemed in the least Messianic.
And yet, something happened.
Really.  Something big
and universal and unifying
happened to us all.
Mostly in private,
a great, silent gasp
shuddered through us
in that moment when we crossed
from one century to another,
-- Oh, that was splendid too! --
But when we crossed
from one millennium to the next,
Well that!  That was grand
and wonderful and awesome
in its hugeness, and we felt,
each of us,
the stepping over threshold
from one era to another,
as if we were tiny grains of sand
shifting upon an unknown virgin shore,
and really, it was, in a word, cosmic.
 

99-00

Like wide-open, unblinking eyes
amazed by future hope,
--and perversity--
00 looms large
with millennial possibility,
while 99 turns its back,
and retreats, sullen,
into history.