the end of something, were it only

and i think it was there beneath
that salmon-colored sky
when all the world was a fish
that the lure of longitude (or
was it latitude) drew me to you.
it was there beneath skyfire
in the silence of the longest moment
in the hum of that very silence
in the deafening scream of that
veritable silence within the crags,
crannies, and nooks, the western expanse
of expanse, and confused economy that
i lost and again found my place. and it
was then, precisely, that i ceased and
you ceased and in an envelope of sky
our fates were sealed in the unlikely
beauty of the end and lovely hum of it
all.

originally published in Cotton Row Anthology II, 1997