**On Dust Storms May Exist by Ben Groner III**

by Tyler Truman Julian

Dust Storms May Exist, Ben Groner III’s full-length debut, is a tour de force in the deeply American road trip narrative. The poems of Dust Storms May Exist traverse the American (and South American) landscape and the rise and fall of the human soul. Groner’s poems explore memory, health, and identity, always circling around the theme that life is full of small miracles. These seemingly ordinary moments are where memories are forged, life is lived despite challenges, and identity is shaped. Groner’s descriptive and narrative style beautifully captures the essence of daily life, presenting it as nothing short of miraculous.
            The collection opens with “The Window,” and Groner’s speaker longs for experience, gazing out on the world from a rented room:

            There is a sense my entire life is out
            there, verging and pulsing, waiting.
            Maybe existence in any meaningful
            sense requires both embodiment
            and action.

This desire for action begets motion. The poem continues,

            I set my pen aside, close my journal,
            turn out the light, the hills blazing and
            shimmering in silence. I wonder how
            long I have been holding my breath.

Groner effectively introduces the reader to the collection’s philosophy of life, while his descriptive and narrative style keeps the work accessible. There’s a remarkable depth here that continues throughout the collection in each seemingly mundane moment.
In “Feed & Seed,” the speaker establishes the road trip narrative that drives the collection forward and highlights the growing significance of each ordinary moment. A stop along the road results in a visit to a small-town church turned dance hall one Saturday night, and it becomes a reflection on home and meaning making. “Perhaps not one of us can go home / again, but who would want to?” the speaker asks, then continues,

            places don’t seem to have meaning
            until people bestow it. At times,

            we may need to pray; at others, we
            need to dance. What are our bodies

            supposed to do with space, with
            themselves? We whirled the night

away until the band closed out their
set with Hank’s classic gospel hymn.

Standing by the front pew, the whole
room singing, I’ll fly away oh glory,

we let our shoulders lean and touch,
my eyes pressed shut, my lungs belting

out the tune with all their might,
feeling as if some unsayable place

            within me had already taken flight.

Here and elsewhere, these everyday moments take on a spiritual dimension, and Groner is unafraid to explore these heights while his speaker waxes philosophical. In “To Which We Are Going,” a reflection on John 6:16-21, the speaker retells the story of Peter and Jesus walking on water and the apostles’ boat miraculously arriving at the seashore seconds later. He then clarifies,

            And that’s where it ends. Talk about
            a cliffhanger. The walking on water bit
            gets all the attention while the teleportation
            is hardly mentioned, as if the existence
            of one miracle precludes the need for another.
            But my days are filled with phenomena
            I flounder to explain, pairs of realities
            I’ve never imagined nor deserved,
            one story always leaning into the next.

            How the achiote carnitas tacos
            from La Mulita Express #2 food truck
            last week were generously garnished
            with both cilantro and lime; how in a month
            both a low-hanging, smoldering bead of sun
            and a nascent crescent will share the sky’s vast
            dome; how in two years the turbulent passions
            of Verdi’s Il trovatore will surge from both
            the unseen orchestra pit and the opera
            singers strutting upon the stage.

These little things are placed on the same plane as the two miracles in the Gospel of John. This focus on the mundane is subversive. Religious experience is unnecessary for one to be filled with wonder and awe. “But I’m not asking for revelation,” the speaker further explains.

            I don’t need to be taken anywhere,
            don’t wish the scroll of my days
            unfurled and dissected. I welcome
            the breeze rolling off the ridge
            into sky the color of spring.
            I turn to face the pine-lined trail
            to which I am going and set off
            on two resolved legs, forging ahead
            with the first, and then the other.

Groner’s approachable poetry, combined with his frequent philosophical flights, emphasizes the speaker’s personal growth and evolving sense of self. By the end of the collection, this identity exhibits a sense of fluidity, achieved through the freedom of actively engaging in life rather than merely observing from the sidelines. This sense of freedom and fluidity leads to deeper introspection:

            so what should I make of this moment?
            or this one?

what state are we in anyway?

what state are we in the midst
of being? (“State of Being”)

Notably, Groner’s style has changed in “State of Being.” The poem still contains narrative and descriptive moments, but it culminates in these probing broken couplets that lack capitalization and standard grammar, emphasizing the speaker’s grappling with mystery and miracle. Expectedly, these rules return in the collection’s last poem, “Precarious Cairns,” to punctuate the importance of the lessons presented throughout the collection. In a type of coda, Groner’s speaker gives the reader a parting reminder that little miracles make up a life and one must go out and do something to experience them. In “Precarious Cairns,” he explains,

            First it was about the sights I was seeing, then
            who I was seeing them with. The land itself,
            then the sensation of soaring 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 few tendrils of knowledge, of truth,
            have yet to be pressed into a page, a song.
            It has taken me so long to be inside my own life.

Verging on ars poetica, “Precarious Cairns” reinforces Groner’s philosophy that life is made up of little moments that one gives meaning to and looks back on.
           Dust Storms May Exist is a powerful debut. Throughout the collection, Ben Groner III embraces profundity while balancing it with accessible and engaging narrative poetry, making the exploration both thought-provoking and enjoyable. The pages are infused with a refreshing sense of hopefulness that stands out in contemporary poetry. The reader is invited into the journey of one man’s life and challenged to go out and live their own through “embodiment / and action.” Dust Storms May Exist reminds us to stop holding our breath.

In case you missed it—here are Ben Groner III’s poems from The Shore:

If My Physical Ailments Took a Road Trip

C Boarding Group