Hair stuck
to my sweaty four-year-old forehead
after running around that smoky room
full of men with half-full Bud cans
in a building since demolished
my father was somehow
the president
of the local fish & game club
though he'd only downed one deer
and had recently moved
to the hamlet.
I caught a baby snapping turtle
its shell like a walnut
in the same pond where
he broke a hole in the ice
and planted our family
Christmas tree one winter
trying to save what was doomed.
"I went fishing there one last time,"
he said in passing, 36 years later.
"They're busting the dam to build houses."
Our pains are present
but different
gold in a brass age
undiagnosed.
