Down under the tons of the last
millennium, I wonder:

did the denizens of the West,
aware and otherwise, feel

the weight of hundreds, years
—before the evaporation

into three zeros—nil clasped
in eggshell, 999 uncurling,

relaxing like a spent traveler
at the final inn, no tension,

weightless in its end,
those endless circles

swaddling only babes
of the possible

who sleep untroubled
in the fresh linen, smoothed

new at the bud of one thousand
that began rising, flexing at 1,

tightening, furling, screw-boring
until it drop to the ova at the taut

edge of three digits far hence.