The Satyr

I glimpsed it or him from the train as a brief confusing vision, whilst I was rolling rapidly eastwards in a train towards London late one morning.

He, man or Pan, was leaning against the frame of the doorway at the entrance of a lineside railway hut. He was tanned bronze, with short curly fair hair. His upper body was naked, muscular and paunchy, with his dull brown railway overalls folded down below his navel over his thighs and buttocks, giving his legs the appearance of goaty haunches. A single dangling sleeve looked like a horse's tail hanging down behind him.

The train passed by, and I lost sight of him after just a few seconds, but the half-human image lingered on.