red letter day

this is a round number in a new century
when i was a boy it seemed an almost infinite length of time
a heaping of year after year that was not to be imagined
what would i be like then? where would i be?

would i be great or famous? or would i just be old?
old as my father seemed to my infantine eyes
unimaginably unspeakably old
like the dull grey bricks and the leaden sky

and of course it does not seem that way
i am still who i was only with so much more
experience of life experience paid for with life
and still remembering those distant thoughts

but my niece now the same age i was then
says uncle you are old you are old unthinking
that one day with luck she too will reach this number
and not think of herself as being old

and my children tell me that i am old
and incapable of understanding the world of their youth
not knowing that i had said much the same
to my own father all those decades ago

somehow the number has a meaning somehow it signifies
a notable milepost a turning point in life though all
it really indicates is that the planet turning around the sun has seen
this place before and once when it did so

i was born with all my parents wishes focused on my tiny
body my small clasping hands my dark allseeing eyes
the things that i too have come to see have come to know
in my own children and i doubt not they will see in theirs

all of this is but to say that i am living at a point somewhere
between my coming and my going and commemorating both
with all the hope that i can still muster
and all the joy that i believe remains