My Mother Was a Valkyrie

James Butler-Gruett

My mother sang at the airport.
Or: we left her at her gate
and in kindergarten I didn’t
know planes or boarding passes.
On the phone she fed me
details I would like.
I have a sword, for one role.
The tenor calls me Xena!
I pictured her swashbuckling,
doing lip trills on the tarmac,
ducking around the men
with serious orange glowsticks.
In one photograph she’s Brünnhilde
backstage hefting my sister and me.
Her hair’s fake gold on shiny chainmail.
I, five or so, look dazed and cowlicked,
far from crying Hojotoho! myself.
Some things my father knew to hide from her
if he’d fed my sister and me only poptarts for a few days,
if my socks were different colors.
If I had, as I remember, hidden bread crusts in the VCR.
If I had wandered through the house at night, unsleeping
crying out, Where’s mom?
And today, my first adult Wagner:
one hour of yawn, two hours of brawn,
five hours of awe. String parts needle
and horns burble. Wotan’s vampy
vambraces and grizzled eyepatch
shout, Be like me, keening and severe!
Somewhere in my first act fog
there’s a magic sword and Wälse
from a giant’s lips. Brünnhilde’s onstage
when I’m more attentive, she stomps and crashes,
brandishes a spear. I watch her caught in a ring of fire,
I watch her hold for applause. She coruscates there. No look
of mine can ever glean her moment. Watch
her bow, pluck up a bouquet tossed from the house,
watch her walk backstage to someone unseen.