No Reservation: Colville National Park
A campground one third full—people, dogs,
kayaks, black tubes fat on tables—
the lake wide and empty beneath folds
of hills. Under wind, it shifts blue
to brown in ripples soft as brush strokes.
A still life of curved banks, rocks, trees
staggering downhill drunk on summer.
You can walk to Canada from here
as native people must’ve done before
the border, before ships and trappers, and Lewis
and Clark with their slave guide, Sacajawea,
slave bride bought and mounted and with child,
a child herself. Before all the deaths
and lies. We prize this solitude, stolen paradise.
Subhaga Crystal Bacon the author of two volumes of poetry, Blue Hunger, 2020 from Methow Press, and Elegy with a Glass of Whisky, BOA Editions, 2004. A Queer elder, she lives, writes, and teaches on the east slope of the North Cascade Mountains in rural north-central Washington.