Satyr

The satyr bears

The pipes of Pan

In his repose:

The promise of music

And an invitation to ecstasy.

Pan’s companions,

The satyrs partook

In secret rituals

So dangerous they could lead

To personal salvation--

What we might nowadays call bliss.

A writer calls satyrs “savage beasts”

Who represent “man’s unruly, instinctive nature.”

“Savage” seems so harsh, so fearful, a word choice

That I have to look it up;

I want it to mean something other than brutal:

Savage from the Latin salvaticus, an alteration of silvaticus,

Meaning wild, or, literally, of the woods.

Campbell talks about the “divine hygiene of nature”

As Pan’s blessing for those who yield to the call

Rather than surrender to imagined fear.

Mary Oliver puts it this way:

“You have only to let the soft animal of your body

“love what it loves.”

Pan’s pipes call you.

Come if you dare.