Eagle Lake

And the first muck of morning light, the old man wakes
his daughter’s son from a half-dream of scales and ice,

their johnboat drifting through the reeds. The boy fumbles
with the hook’s knot, what the old man calls city hands,

that know how to dog-ear a storybook and trace
the cursive laces of his sneakers. Not like his grandfather

chucking the anchor near a stump, who lets his body
become part of the lake’s calm wind—who in these later years

has tried to forget the fog and gunpowder on the Yalu River.
Sometimes, the old man feels the stiff formations of pines shift closer,

tries to hide the scarred map on his shaking palms.
He can still smell the cinders. When the boat passes

into the shade of a willow tree, a dark coil drops hissing
near the boy. The old man pins the moccasin under an oar

and lops off the head with his skinning knife, its tail scrolling
into a stillness. He stretches the skin out like a serif

across the bow, breaking the boy into a world he’s longed for,
bloody words of the past painted against metal.