The poet writes of Native American games

They brought blood
with hickory sticks
Arbeka Creeks
playing rugby on the plains
carnage in Canadian Valley
the audience Fernando de Soto
on his way to Mississippi.

They cupped and laced
the sticks with thongs
to catch a deerskin ball
then fasted and stomped
throughout the night
taking their “black drink tea”
boiled from yaupon leaves.

At dawn a ref threw up the ball
red skin, red blood upon the field
as if the world had shrunk:
Armageddon between four poles.