Football season

The first thing you notice is the smell of cut grass,
For it is a game that begins in summer's bounty
And is played out on the thinning brown carpet of Autumn.
Then comes the sharp sniff of lime dust
Measuring off the fields on which you play
In yards and ten yard increments,
For football is a game of down and distance.
Then, if you are fortunate enough,
You grasp the smell of new leather, once pigskin,
Married together with the aroma of the earth beneath your feet,
The cool dew of a summer morning, an evening thunderstorm,
Even the surprise of an early November snowfall,
When your legs will burn, your body will coil like a snake
Taking head-on the beatings to come
Which leave you with those foggy memories:
September afternoons, gray days in October and November
As you marched across those fields of conquest,
The victor or the vanquished, no matter, really,
Its that you played the games that matters,
Suddenly remembering the pallete of orange and crimson brushes
Of the oaks and maples planted beyond the field
And the Fall breeze whisper, the pink and purple sunsets
Of a Football weekend,
Your limbs bearing the purple bruising
Tattooed by the endeavor, the badges of honor, of the season,
Of memory.