HERO WORSHIP

I look out over the room
and there he is,
sitting at the corner table
at our 50th reunion,
once the twelve-year-old
whose uncanny curve ball
nicked the corner of the plate
almost every time before
smacking my catcher’s mitt,
the pitch that single-handedly
snatched the title for our team.

In dreams and idle musings
over the years, I replayed
the pitch in my head:
the wind-up, release, trajectory,
red stitches on a side-roll
in a downward arc to the batter’s
short-reaching swing –
the perfect true-ness of it
inspired me over time to dig in deep,
to hone fine edges, focus hard
on every task undertaken thereafter.

After the hand-shaking, back-slapping,
cracking wise about the ravages of age,
I cut straight to worshipful words
about the boy wonder on the mound,
enough to enshrine him in Cooperstown.
Boy Wonder hears me out in full
but with puzzlement in his eyes.
He comes back with a dismissive sweep
of the hand, saying, “Thanks, ole buddy,
but you got it all wrong – it was really
the father-and-son coaching duo that won
the day, just in the way they took us in like sons
of their own – making all the difference.”

Next day my mind falls back to its usual groove,
but strange to say, the catcher is leaping, lunging,
digging in the dirt to save wild pitches – forgotten
in the stirred-up infield dust of victory day.