Last Home Game

Today was a perfect fall day with the sun out and the air chilled. As we came through the tunnel into the light the national anthem was just starting. We were high enough up to see the hills that were behind the campus that was behind the stadium. The entire band arranged in the letters U S A on the field, yet the song was played by just one trumpeter. He wore a propeller beanie and a tattered band jacket, oversized clowny eyeglasses. As it finished one fighter jet passed over us all, its sonic boom filling the body and the ear with a volume at once too loud and not loud enough. How do they always time it so perfectly that it flies over as the song is just getting to the home of the brave? And they cant just land in the parking lot. Where do they land?

I once dreamed I was in the cockpit, I was doing the fly-over and I remember the wonderful vertigo, and everyone the size of a million ants filling the bowl of a stadium.