Finding Pan

There you are. I first found you in London’s Covent Garden.

As an amulet in sterling silver, you charmed me there and then,

my rustic friend. You’ve hung a hand’s width above my heart

for four hundred and twenty-six moons. Then today, in another

garden—an antipodal world away—you startle me again.

There you are. A statue cast from molten metal; casting your wry smile

across this vast blue harbour. With a perfect northeast aspect, you look

out and imagine that Sydney party you never made it to. Overboard,

off a ferry—the full longnecks in your overcoat dragging you down

to the bottom, inspiring a poem by your drinking buddy, Kenneth.

There you are. Leaning back on shaggy haunches with your cloven

hooves and horned head. Slessor’s “Five Bells” tolling in my skull:

“the Cross hangs upside-down in water.” There’s the crux! I adopt

your eternal view. Misadventure or adventure missed? When pissed,

I ponder how the bottle conspires to sink the drinker.

There you are. Fresh rainwater pools in the cavities of your collarbones

where perhaps a tiny bird might land to quench its early summer

thirst. You take in the cruise ship visitors posing for selfies in front

of the Opera House. Some will come over, touch you for good luck—

your bronzed arms and phallus now rubbed to a brassy shine.

There you are. Satyr, Faunus, Pan. My muse, my protector, my weakness.

You’re forever exposed to the elements. I think of the raindrops sprinkling

my face that time I looked up through the oculus in Rome’s Pantheon—

a pagan immersion. Now there you sit and grin and pine for someone,

something long gone. Drowned—never found. And yet, here we are.