Glenn Arnold

Glenn Arnold

When I heard that name, my name,
Glenn, uttered for the first time
on the thin pasty lips of my
pre-school matron, some puckish
imp within said yes, that is you;
well put, well said, aptly named
after your own Irish/Scottish selves
and hirsute clan brothers,
a derivation of Glen, meaning
“a valley in the mountains”;
you have spent lifetimes being Gleann,
you have the calves for a kilt, and
you do not mind the onerous heft
of an highlander’s broadsword,
as well as Glynn and Glinn;
and though it is hard to fathom,
one day your daughters will call you
Glennster and Glennerton.

Later, wearing Glenn like a mackinaw
for decades I discovered
some famous Glenns,
whom of course, somehow
I was associated with:
Glenn Gould, Ford, Miller, Campbell, Corbett,
Cunningham, Close, even Strange.

Moving along like roughage on a colonic tour,
I arrive at the midships, the innards, the vertex,
the balancing point of my namous trilogy;
Arnold, and I found it surly, still resentful
of how I had usurped its former stature
as first name, shoving, cajoling, mugging it,
and chaining it behind, in harness,
and in stentorian timbre, in iambic pentameter,
I was informed that Arnold was Old English,
by way of a French matriarch bred with Celts
after the Norman Invasion, and that it meant
“eagle ruler”--passing itself off through the
cavalcade of centuries as Arnau, Arn, Arne,
Arnoldo, Arndt, and Arnoit.

I welcomed Arnold to my affectionous nucleus
and forbade guilt, and exorcised forgiveness,
and introduced it to that helixious imp,
which had imparted the wisdom hidden-
regarding the balanced placement
in the medieval mosaic of Me,
entity eternal, when the pecking order
was carved, and then assigned to live
as ink in officialdom, plotting the spiritual
schematic of who I was to become,
and would be remembered as.

Glenn Buttkus October 2010

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