TEXAS VS. OKLAHOMA STATE: 10/1/2016

There was nothing defined except the earthy colors

of a trembling blur of sixty-thousand screaming fans
in the stadium.  An abstract painting with color the
only integrator.  Everywhere the orange and black of
the home team, borrowed from Princeton in the 1890s. 
With occasional dots of the visiting team’s white and
Texas orange, a burnt caliche.      

There was nothing defined except the color of the

clear, cloudless sky, a perfect ring of cerulean above
the bathtub rim of the stadium.  Not even a contrail
up there.  The only aberration a single Monarch
butterfly sailing on sun sparkled wings, above the
football’s arch.  Its black, orange and white, the colors
of both teams, of the crowded stadium. 

Odds are I was one in sixty-thousand to notice it sailing

up there.  I’m not much of a football fan after all.  To
know Monarchs will become quasi-extinct over the next
twenty years is enough for me to pay attention.  To know
that as long as there is an America there will be Football.