I have a friend in Montana. I know, that sounds like an advertisement for prime steaks. My friend DW Groethe is a cowboy.
He ropes and rides and mends fences, and all the other home-on-the-range stuff. He is also a poet and a songwriter who plays the guitar. He’s so good at those things he has headlined at the Elco National Cowboy Poetry Gathering and performed at the Kennedy Center and Library of Congress. We ran into each other at Smokey’s Bar, in Bainville, Mont., on my western painting trip in 1999.
This relationship has been maintained for 22 years by writing and a handful of calls. DW’s not one for phone chatting, but he’s good with a pen. He writes a Christmas poem every year with limited distribution — a whimsical, handcrafted beauty — which I recite at the family holiday dinner as part of our tradition.
DW has published several books of poetry and has one in the works for just the Christmas poems. I wrote a foreword for that. He sang and played happy birthday to Doreen from a cold and windy February stockyard by phone video. I did a painting of Buddy, a favorite steer of his.
One of the reasons I cherish this friendship is because it exists in a different framework from my everyday goings-on. In my mind our conversations happen on a porch or in a barn on the prairie. A place with a spare magnificence.
Our letters often contain a truth about life. Sometimes it’s raw, but there is no mean-spiritedness and not one single time have we mentioned politics. Two decades plus, and I honestly don’t know his thoughts on that subject. I don’t need to.
What we share is a love and understanding of life, the music of language, crafting sentences, and considering real and simple moments. We’re friends. Having the choice, that’s what I want to be.
Robert Beck, a painter and writer, lives in Solebury Township and paints in many places.
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