By Edward Abbey
Date: 25 March 2000

North Rim (July, 1970--Grand Canyon, Arizona)

Everything conspires to haunt me here
with memory and thought and sense of you:
the fragrant lupine and the quiet deer,
the hawk that soars against the icy blue
of noon, the silver aspen on whose bark
I carved your name and mine within a heart;
the night you came so softly in the dark;
the day I came to you at last--to part.

My darling girl, is there no end to love
which lives despite all loss, regret and tears?
that flourishes on mountain rock, above
the plain, and grows against the wind and years?
Let it be so. I'll consecrate my days
to loving love, and you, and all I praise.