January 2nd

Here’s the first poem from my index card boxes for poems that start with the letter J:

January 2nd—

middle-aged jogger on the treadmill

running backwards

This was a Y2K poem. Remember that? At the dawn of the year 2000, maybe we all wished time could run backwards away from an uncertain future. Or maybe this was at least about the typical new-year resolution to exercise more, starting on January 2nd. I wrote this on 3 February 2000, in San Carlos, California. After unsuccessfully submitting it to Modern Haiku about a month later, I had success sending it to Frogpond, where it was published in the fall of 2000. It was part of a larger sequence, titled “Treadmill,” about the fears of Y2K that proved unfounded. I wrote the first five of the sequence’s seven verses on December 30 and 31, 1999. The “January 2nd” verse was the concluding verse, presenting a denouement after all the fuss of Y2K.

—20 May 2025 (previously unpublished)