A window
By Bob Hulteen
I have a long-time friend named Larry Kiewel.
I finally met Larry in person a couple months ago.
For about 15 years, Larry was an acquaintance at a distance who was always just an email away. We first got in touch when I was editor of the Metro Lutheran. Larry would occasionally respond to an editorial I penned or a news story that I included. He seemed to appear as an email in my Inbox just when I needed … either to offer support on something controversial or to challenge me to think more broadly or take a deeper dive on a piece that really just skimmed the surface of a topic.
We would sometimes write back and forth a few times a month. Sometimes we would go months without contact. It was an electronic friendship; we knew each other just by virtual Windows (I’m now accepting my fate as a PC user).
Well, that’s not totally true. Along the way we found out that my family sold our flock of sheep to his college roommate’s family … in 1963. There were other ways our shadows may have crossed over the years. But, we never met in person.
Do you have a friend who opens windows for you to other perspectives, whether actual neighbors or neighbors from afar?
WELL, WE FINALLY MET a couple months back. Larry and his wife have moved off the farm and now live in St. Peter. We got together for coffee at a favorite haunt of his, not too far from Gustavus Adolphus College. I arrived first; were any of those already there Larry? It’s always awkward when trying to meet an unknown person in a popular spot.
When he did arrive, we immediately started talking. And we talked. And we shared poetry – Larry shared his, I shared my dad’s. We talked faith communities, and theology, and sheep, and farming, and writing, and children, and cancer and COVID, and, … and, … and.
“Our similar lives – including all the divergences – just meant that there was depth to mine and angles of vision to share.”
What a gift to have met a friend. I suppose it could have gone badly. Maybe the computers could have been a buffer that created comfortability that wouldn’t be there IRL. (Do people still use that phrase for “in real life”?) But, our similar lives – including all the divergences – just meant that there was depth to mine and angles of vision to share. Our shared hope that the divide between urban and rural communities could be healed provides a strong grounding.
I still love getting emails from Larry. They brighten my day. He is a gifted writer/poet; his turns of phrase make me sit back in my chair to think, to contemplate – something I don’t do frequently enough, I suspect.
With his permission, I am going to share a poem he recently shared with me, written for his brother and cousins in a monthly letter he sends to them. I hope you like it as much as I did/do:
I Have a Window
It is required that a poet have a window.
What a wonderful metaphor.
It separates me on the inside
From a world on the outside.
I see the school bus and the garbage truck.
I see the woman two houses down
receive her E-bay bounty from
UPS and Fed-Ex and even Speedi Delivery.
I see baseball, football, and volleyball
all in their season.
I know all the neighborhood dogs
and the schedule of their particular owners.
All of this, while I sit
quiet and warm on the inside.
Perhaps a window is the definition
of being a poet.
Separated from other worlds
the poet gives a view.
Sometimes of the inside
Sometimes of the outside.
I, the poet, have a window
on being a window.