Nana Lampton earned a BA in English literature at Wellesley, and an MA at the University of Virginia, and she attended programs at the Harvard Business School. In 2004, she received an MFA in Writing from Spalding University. Nana has also studied drawing and painting at the Corcoran School of Art and the Louisville Visual Art Association. Nana’s other publications include the books Snowy Owl Gathers in Her Trove, and Moon with the Sun in Her Eye. Her art and poetry have been exhibited at the Chapman Friedman Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Northwoods Gallery in Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin, among others.

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 earned a BA in English literature at Wellesley, and an MA at the University of Virginia, and she attended programs at the Harvard Business School. In 2004, she received an MFA in Writing from Spalding University. Nana has also studied drawing and painting at the Corcoran School of Art and the Louisville Visual Art Association. Nana’s other publications include the books Snowy Owl Gathers in Her Trove, and Moon with the Sun in Her Eye. Her art and poetry have been exhibited at the Chapman Friedman Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Northwoods Gallery in Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin, among others.

Nana Lampton earned a BA in English literature at Wellesley, and an MA at the University of Virginia, and she attended programs at the Harvard Business School. In 2004, she received an MFA in Writing from Spalding University. Nana has also studied drawing and painting at the Corcoran School of Art and the Louisville Visual Art Association. Nana’s other publications include the books Snowy Owl Gathers in Her Trove, and Moon with the Sun in Her Eye. Her art and poetry have been exhibited at the Chapman Friedman Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Northwoods Gallery in Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin, among others.

* Dr. Robert Berman, astronomer, author of Biocentrism, believes that the conscious eye orders energy.

Why did I imagine I knew a charted way?
It has all been revelation.
Ask the owl in dead of night,
go to the ice where all is clear.
The answer looks something like
northern lights, formless and fast.
The road circles mountains
to the edge of the sea.
The course is far from straight.
Spokes rattle in the loose
fitting iron rim, as the staggered
carriage wheel grinds gravel.
Here, in one piece, I am upright
for the rest of the journey, past guard
dogs, to the harbor, beneath the moon,
across the bay bridge beyond borders.

More from Bloom on a Split Board and Nana Lampton:

• “Placement”
• “Time of the Owl”
• “Late Walk”
• “Borderless”
• “Losses”

Nana Lampton earned a BA in English literature at Wellesley, and an MA at the University of Virginia, and she attended programs at the Harvard Business School. In 2004, she received an MFA in Writing from Spalding University. Nana has also studied drawing and painting at the Corcoran School of Art and the Louisville Visual Art Association. Nana’s other publications include the books Snowy Owl Gathers in Her Trove, and Moon with the Sun in Her Eye. Her art and poetry have been exhibited at the Chapman Friedman Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Northwoods Gallery in Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin, among others.

I am a woman
on a rock,
sun on her back,
trying to feel
what the stone
has to say.

–Nana Lampton,
Bloom on a Split Board
Accents Publishing

More from Bloom on a Split Board and Nana Lampton:

• “Time of the Owl”
• “Late Walk”
• “Borderless”
• “Losses”
• “Dark Energy”

Nana Lampton earned a BA in English literature at Wellesley, and an MA at the University of Virginia, and she attended programs at the Harvard Business School. In 2004, she received an MFA in Writing from Spalding University. Nana has also studied drawing and painting at the Corcoran School of Art and the Louisville Visual Art Association. Nana’s other publications include the books Snowy Owl Gathers in Her Trove, and Moon with the Sun in Her Eye. Her art and poetry have been exhibited at the Chapman Friedman Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky, and the Northwoods Gallery in Land O’ Lakes, Wisconsin, among others.