A Small Dose of Fear

by Colin Gibson

My world was reduced to the resonant hum of the heat,

The struggle with scrub, determined working of feet.

My very next step was almost complete ...

When, unleashing the threat that the heat had been brewing,

It seemed the leaf-litter beneath me hissing and spewing

As the brown snake spat "What the hell are you doing?!"

Indignant, insulted, it leapt to alert on the ground;

What manner of creature was I that came crashing around

Disturbing the peace with a devil of sound?

 

And rearing on its spine, like a dagger it whipped back its head:

I instinctively halted in the very midst of my tread

(For one more step I’d be walking with the dead).

I froze in that instant, I dared not to blink -

Those fangs could have found their mark in the tenth of a wink;

We each had a split-of-a-second to think.

For that moment, my fate in the balance, no options were mine

Transfixed by a force that I could not describe or define,

Like a psychic grip in control of my spine.

Then, soon as the snake was sure with its will I’d complied,

It dropped to the leaves and spun to one side

And shot through the sticks like a whip at a hide.

My companion’s footsteps crunched up through the bush from behind

And the curious question was put to me "What did you find?"

"Something" I said "of the slithering kind."

I stood there: that moment seemed tangible, crystal and clear

As the sweat on my brow, with the pulsing of blood in my ear,

Cooled with the chill of a small dose of fear.