The imposition of story forms, by Ken Belford

I have been erased in the stories
that are now told of the Blackwater.
Everybody talks about stories
but nobody remembers them long.

I have a little black bag I wear on my back.
I was an outlaw and my story was killed
without sacrifice. More human than divine,
I am not a man and I live between the forest
and the city. I think the way animals think.

There is the subject and the subjected and
everything happens as if. The cities
at the headwaters of the nass were dissolved
by cutting through the subject but I made places
for rest and found something to eat.

The camp was originally a line cabin
from which one could see both ways –
to the Skeena and the Nass, Blackwater to the front,
the forest on three sides. When I first saw it,
there were no trails and the value was zero.
It’s still unroaded but it won’t be long before it isn’t.