Kevin Dunn
Barry Peters
This morning I thought about Kevin Dunn,
my peewee baseball coach, in particular
that flash of exuberance when he showed
our catcher how to bound from a crouch,
scoop up a bunt, and spin in one motion,
a pirouette of ease and power and grace,
then fire to first base where I stood enthralled,
glove by my side watching not the ball
but Kevin Dunn’s balletic demonstration
in the heat and dust of a July afternoon,
Kevin Dunn who seemed to me big as a man
but I now understand was probably
a college student with a summer job
teaching ten-year-olds the national pastime,
some of us with older brothers passing time
halfway around the world in a strange land
called Vietnam, though not Kevin Dunn,
a conundrum beyond our comprehension;
no, we were simply mesmerized by
Kevin Dunn, especially me, who never saw
the baseball that he rifled in my direction,
feeling only the burst of hurt on my forehead,
my teammates marveling the next day
at the size of the purple egg, my parents
unable to discern if I was more confused
than usual, confused as I was weeks later
when I saw Kevin Dunn walking alone in town,
flat-footed, round-shouldered, and I yelled
Hey Coach out the station wagon window,
and one of his hands emerged slowly
from his pocket into the air like a stop sign,
his blank stare the opposite of exuberance;
and something changed for me, seeing
this Kevin Dunn who had no clue
that I was the kid he had struck down,
as I would be struck down again and again
in the decades that followed whenever
I didn’t keep my eye on the ball; the way
one final thing will strike me down,
sooner rather than later. I can only hope
I’m in the thrall of something beautiful.
Barry Peters lives in Durham, NC. Publications include Barrow Street, Grist, Image, RHINO, and The Southern Review.