Season of the Immortals

 

 

These two brothers are far from tired,

but dusk is falling and they can’t

play in this fresh snow forever.

 

There’s a fox at the edge of the wood,

weaving through dark trunks

with the ease of a serpent through water,

 

revealing his crimson coat

and the point of his tail

only in flashes: an alluring trick

 

for their eager eyes.

But these brothers are snow-

blind at the moment

 

and pay no more heed to him

than to the dusk, or the numbness

in their fingers and toes.  

 

Their mother stands on the deck,

her arms folded tightly about her,

calling out to them from another place

 

where the snow’s been shoveled away

but the cold and the falling dark

send shivers down her spine. 

 

 

Jason M. Vaughn, a Premium Audit Technician, graduated from the University of KS with a BFA in Painting, twelve credits short of a second major in Creative Writing.  His work has appeared in The Kansas City Star, Thorny Locust, I-70 Review, The River King Poetry Supplement, and The Same.  In addition, one of his poems has been accepted for an upcoming issue of Blue Unicorn, and he is currently working on a novel.