Travis Cox left school a famous man.
He’d worn on his helmet the word, “Co-Captain,”
hash marks at each rim that said
he made more tackles than any other lineman
in the conference. His gift was seeing
the funnel in each play,
the way a man is passed through others.
He said it was God who made him this way,
vortex, no matter where he was.
Eight years out of pads,
he could still draw a crowd. Soft,
beer-heavy men huddled with him at a restaurant booth,
beside a road, they took the guns down from their racks,
gutted their deer on gym sets.
He stayed their captain until the end,
that day at work for Central Power and Light.
Belted to a pole, thirty feet up,
his friends watching him below, Travis mixed his ground,
and gathered the power of two counties into his arms.
Lights dimmed in every house for miles.
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