BEN GRONER III

Precarious Cairns

First it was about the sights I was seeing, then 
who I was seeing them with. The land itself,
then the sensation of soaring far above it.
 
First it was about music, history, geography,
regional cuisine and lore, then simply an
adventure shared with a girl, a friend.
 
So much has been given and received: 
conversations, months, bodies—
the precarious cairns of memory.
 
A year from now, the slim spire of the Sentinel
hoodoo will succumb to eons of erosion,
collapsing like beliefs that once held us intact.
 
There will be no witnesses to its vanishing. 
Thousands will scour photo albums for proof 
it had been there, evidence they had too— 
 
as will I, finding none. I didn’t record our 
discussion with the young Navajo guide at
Antelope Canyon, the reasons for our mutual
 
interest in one another already blurring away.
I can’t replicate the recipe for Adobe Deli’s 
cheesy onion soup, and I didn’t jot down 
 
the bawdy songs and clever poems amassed 
from descendants of settlers on spiral-bound
sheaves in the Luna Mimbres Museum.
 
But I’ve learned something I haven’t found 
written on any page, in any language. It has 
taken me so long to be inside my own life.

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 Cheat River Review, Whale Road Review, Midway Journal, Louisiana Literature, Third Wednesday, and elsewhere. He’s also a bookseller at Parnassus Books. You can see more of his work at bengroner.com/creative-writing/