Ronald Moran
LEGACY OF A COACH
In my high school, the football coach taught
gym,
and my senior year he made us stand, side
by side,
the toes of our Keds on the out-of bounds
line,
most wearing mismatched shorts and t-shirts,
all misfits
he called us, because we did not play football
and
thus had to take gym in the fall/winter term.
He stood
at the vertex of his isosceles triangle, maybe
some
thirty feet in front of us, caressing a softball
like a lover,
while explaining his version of dodge ball:
throwing it
hard as he could, at randomly chosen targets.
Once hit,
if not already floored, we had to sit, nursing
wounds
in silence, while the last of us standing, neither
bruised
nor bloodied, to be rewarded by exempting
gym
for the rest of the school year, with the grade
of A.
As the coach wound up, as if he were pitching
hardball,
we sat down, later calling it passive resistance,
much later.
Wild Goose Poetry Review 
Nothing like learning the lesson the way my father would have—“too soon old and too late smart” having been one of his favorite expressions. The poem is simply grand: I especially love the wry not of the closing
Phebe Davidson