The Imagined Copperhead

Without intending to hide, the imagined copperhead hid on the path ahead, unseen on bronze leaves, unheard, and a mortal likelihood at every step. This was childhood, mine, the wood’s jihad against a boy who’d intruded among monkshood, wasp, tick, and nettles haired with needles. Scrub brush abhorred him with a horde of  welts, bites, and stings, but he’d never seen a copperhead, though he’d looked hard taking, as he’d been ordered, heed. The snake wasn’t a falsehood, though, to him. Dread was his nature, and he hared through sunlight and shade, head swiveling for the copperhead he’d begun to covet, the ballyhooed killer a camouflaged godhead on which his inborn faith cohered, and his priesthood.