2000: Wasn't that the year Gao Xingjian got a Nobel prize
& we learned how snowflakes in water sound?

Wasn't that when gene therapy began
& the rhythm of solar heartbeats was found?

Didn't mad cow disease rampage Europe then
as we learned how fungi survive in space?

That year didn't John Adams compose El Niño
as Putin stepped onto the world's stage?

Yes!
Then JP Norman explored new horizons
& Gwendolyn Brooks bid farewell to poetry.

So why remember that - or any year?
Perhaps because the past
is in you and me.