Garage Sale Poetry

...those poems that have sat in the garage for years, not good enough to use, but not quite ready for the dustbin if only someone with a little effort would take the time to salvage them, patch a rip, revarnish, mend a broken slat or maybe tease it all apart and make the resulting cloth into something new. I have some of those broken, garage sale poems that I should throw out, but can't quite make myself do it. I get that pack rat gene from my mom, a trait against which I must have constant vigilance--and still the stuffs pile up in the nest. Here's one I really should trash, but it holds the sentimental memory of a certain time of study around 2000, a time of Classic gods and of the Kalevala and other connections I made around then. It's not of much use except to store away, only to bring it out once in a while, blow off the dust, sneeze and remember.


Tell the Lay of Ol' Pan Horny
How he prances spry and randy
By the brook of living waters,
Where the hollow reeds are soughing
By the pines with cones and pollen,
By the pillar lofty rising,
In the moonlight he is dancing.
Not alone the goat God dances,
But with maidens fair and lusty.
All his satyr girls adore him;
On the lawn they love him rutting;
In the trees they love him laughing;
On the rocks they watch him gambol;
Over hills they watch him trotting,
Hills that quake when rage is breaking
Like the raptured issue bursting.
Expectation stirs the ether.
Spritely lasses shake their nubbins,
Hairy tails of piebald patterns,
While above the clouds are moiling.
Then the rain and hail are striking.
Lightning strikes the highest oak tree,
Thunder quails the nymphic lovelies
As they covey then they scatter.
In their Panic rushing blindly
Into arms so strong and tender,
Of the all-embracing Lover,
He who rules the mighty thunder,
Lord of Sea and Sun and Nature,
He who banishes the Fury
With a strident stomp, a mandate,
Where the damsels find their refuge,
Sanctuary, arms encircling,
Like the seasons that are turning.
In the Spring they love him nightly;
Summer warms their blood for dancing;
In the Autumn surge their urges;
Winter finds the goat girls lounging
In the cave of Pan's reclining
With his wine and bread and honey,
With his goat girls by the fireside,
With his maidens sweet and musky,
Passes winter drunk and lusty
Till the southern Sun approaches
From the south whence He was summoned.
Then the goat God herds his ladies,
With their bellies fat with babies,
On to pastures green and springing,
By the swollen, warbling streamside.
Heavily the gravid goat girls
Welcome spring in quiet fashion.
Then the night hears in the meadow
Groans abundant, blood and birthing.
In the starlight Pan is pacing
On the hilltop till the morning.
Then the kids, the little Pan kids
With their itchy horns just budding
And the lively, infant faun girls
With their silky hair just growing
Play on lawns among the daisies,
Tumbling, innocently prancing,
Till their cloven hooves are weary
And their little tummies grumble.
Off to rest on mama's titties,
Ample dugs divine and milky,
While their Father, God and Ruler
Sage and mighty, watches over.
Yet another good year passes
Under Sun and Moon and Heaven
While the Lord is merry-making
Through the sacred seasons burning.
Thus immortal insight springs up
Like the blossoms He has bidden
In the meadow as he passes,
In the goat God's cloven hoofprint,
Like the seed that He is planting
In the flesh of pretty satyrs.
From the pipes that He is playing,
In the drifting songs of goat herds
And the goat girls they are tending,
Is the harmony and timbre,
Of the wisdom for tomorrow.

-me