Next to nothing to enter the stream.
A light rod, waders against the cold,
a sense of how the salmon lie –
behind the rock in lesser current.
More than anything that weighs,
it’s the willingness to be half in darkness.
The feel of boot on rock is the way to see
below the surface.

I cross the river,
staff thrust downstream to prop my steps
against the current. At last
I stand firmly, to cast
where dark ripples meet lighter ones.

All that departs my sheathed self is filament with fly
patiently tied for dropping in
the river in disguise.
The rod no longer measures time or space.
It’s all in the meeting of stream currents.

Atlantic salmon, heavy with its ocean feed,
about to fast a year on its way up river,
waits for rain to fill its pool
before leaping to the next one.

The catch:
the long reeling
of this golden silver light moving in scales
formed as much by mind as water.

–Nana Lampton,
Bloom on a Split Board
Accents Publishing