Burned the image into my flybox, hoping to use the grain in the wood as part of the overall concept. It appears the dark grain is softer than the main parts of the box and burned much darker than the overall image. Question, is there anyway to lighten the dark parts of the image?
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Possibly you could use a small wire brush to remove some of the char, but I don’t think it will ever match the rest of the image.
How about a light blue wash over the really excellent grain - it is water and the darker piece of the fish’s tail is under water. I am impressed with your execution - the intergration of the grain into the picture is TOP SHELF!
I too have found that the dark area of the grain takes laser energy from my diode laser a lot more effectively (burns darker and faster) than the light colored areas do. I still like your results 
One thing you could try is to use mask layer in your image editor to create 2 images. One that covers the light parts, another for the dark parts. Once you have engraved the 1st layer, swap the image and adjust the settings to even out the power.
To make the alignment accurate, use the picture of the sheet as a guide layers in the image editor.
Thanks all for your suggestions. I did find that a strong blast of compressed air did make a minor improvement. Then a fine wire brush also helped a bit. but when I added the second coat of hard wax oil, it again turned fairly dark. Guess lesson learned. Be selective about the image and where you put it lol. Again thanks for the suggestions and input.