The Encounter

Lying halfway across the path, there was nothing to alert the eye or hint it was anything but a discarded length of rope. Then, approaching closer, I saw it move. A sudden bend gave form to a body, a blunt head flicking out a tongue, the unmistakable profile of a snake. At first it seemed sluggish, slow to move from my way as if the overnight cool still thickened its blood. It did not budge but kept to its space, tightening into itself as if compressing an internal spring. I felt the focus of its unblinking eyes, being sized and measured somewhere in the targeting sights of its brain. I kept still, the distance between us charged with tension, paired to every muscle and tingling sense. I waited, diving deep into the imagined intent gripping the mind of the other, until it turned and slithered away into the long grass and memory. For most, snakes belong to nightmare with death loaded fangs that wait in ambush or are readied to strike the careless foot or heel of some unsuspecting hiker. They dribble their potent brew into the arteries of our sleep. They are the stuff of myth, dark inhabitants of our unconscious carrying what we fear, the primitive, unfathomable parts of ourselves. This morning I saw mine come alive and stare at me before crawling off, back inside.