Three Poems
Ben Groner III To the Men Who Laughed at Moses And to the kids who made fun of their classmate after school yesterday when he stuttered while trying to tell a joke. Plenty of things are perforated, after all: the jungle gym rungs, the white lines bisecting a desert road, the stories we tell ourselves. And every moment has its antecedents. The crowd gathering, the tangling of meanings, the puncture of stony stares. What if the prophet’s mother had done as she was told? I’ve no quarrel with guidelines; I’m thankful for the trees lining the road, the rocks along the riverbank. But do you remember what you were doing when you realized rules really were made to be broken? Show me the person who prefers perfection over presence and I’ll show you last night’s sunset-- singular, though no more or less brilliant than the billion before it. Still, the cumulus clouds reveled in the beams, coating themselves in turmeric and sumac; unpretentious, but flushed with a naked magnificence. I often wonder what would change if we cared less about being right, and more about being made right. No matter if it comes slowly, haltingly, without fanfare. Consider the aged cedar whose trunk continues to swell imperceptibly, despite the phantom limb some punk broke off out of boredom, despite its lightly charred crown from last year’s wildfire. That sort of strength doesn’t wait for a break in the chatter, a break in the water. A grey heron rises from the river like a memory about to return, and skims the reeds as it sets its course for the day when the words come easily, when the people on the shore know what it’s like to be free. The Long Light of Late Afternoon Either the universe is perpetually silent or it is always shouting, and if the latter, what on earth is it saying? I suppose I’m being presumptuous when I have my ears cocked only for 21st century American English, with a whisper of a southern drawl. Perhaps I was given an answer years ago, or a better question, but distance or inattentiveness muffled the sound. Now, a teal butterfly wings through the oleander as the long light of late afternoon slants over the switchgrass, then darts in a flash of blue down to the river bend. Any revelation there might have been goes unsaid, waits to be revealed some other time. In the meantime, earthworms tunnel through iron-flecked soil, basketballs ricochet off suburban backboards, black holes wheel through dark matter as they swallow galaxies, particles of the sinking sun sift warmly through the kitchen window. I’ve learned not to pore over the map for too long, but to instead keep my eyes peeled for the bridge that’s—as sure as eggs—up ahead. Alerce Trees The fact that some things are older than others is no surprise, and no great tragedy either. After all, a few of the Alerce trees I hike among now are more than 3,000 years old, younger than the volcanoes the locals promised me a view of, but older than any other living thing I’ve seen. I imagine them strong and content as halfway around the globe, David gazes from his roof at Bathsheba, caught somewhere between stimulus and response, twirling his crown of gemstones, then setting it aside, all while the trees I walk past on this Chilean ridge are transpiring, greeting the morning sun without complaint, with no need for strategy or rules or theology. If we could tap into their memories, what do they not have mouths to say, what do we not have ears to hear? And why does the loom of our memories, so late to the game, seem to spin and whirl independently of our wishes? I’ve forgotten most of my life, though perhaps the fact that I can remember anything at all should be pondered with gratitude. Still, many of the moments I hoped to savor are gone, while plenty of humdrum scenes in nameless days are tucked safely away, clear, nearly violent in their detail. As I hike among that solitude of soil and branch and leaf, those grand trees lifting up the afternoon, I sense the buoyant emptiness of all I’ve still yet to experience, of all the blessings I’ve yet to be given. How could I know even later that year, I’d crane my neck for an hour as the sun sinks somewhere in a Bolivian desert, trying to memorize an unbroken field of clouds burning blood red across the entire sky; or that I’d gaze for the first time at the bare curve of a lover’s back, the soft arc a fiddle’s body, the skin taut and vibrating like strings ready to be drawn across; or that I’d drive with her down a road out West, snaking through an aspen-gold valley while on either side of us mountains-- that existed eons before these Alerce trees—open upward to the sky, that we would feel old and young, lost yet found as the miles slid beneath us, as we forged ahead, hearts also opening to stem and stone, and sky. What words would we exchange like precious gems? |
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About the Author: Ben Groner III (Nashville, TN), recipient of Texas A&M University’s 2014 Gordone Award for undergraduate poetry and a Pushcart Prize nomination, has work published in Appalachian Heritage, New Mexico Review, Third Wednesday, Gnarled Oak, The Bookends Review, and elsewhere. You can see more of his work at bengroner.com/creative-writing/