by Richard Subber | Mar 17, 2020 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
Look who’s counting!
At a certain age, counting fingers is a big thing.
Numerology
He’s counting his fingers now,
another threshold passed without a look back.
He puts some energy into it,
doesn’t remember to count every one every time,
but he’s counting, he’s doing it.
Old Grandfather starts it off,
tapping fingertips,
“One, two, three…”
and he picks up the rhythm,
splaying the fingers of one hand,
fearlessly extending the count,
“…four, five, seven, eight.…”
A couple of those eager fingers get counted twice,
sticking up like chicks in the nest stretching for the worm,
and that’s alright, those fingers are stretching
for the joy of discovery
and the cool of flashing in the air
in the ritual of counting fingers with Old Grandfather,
and counting twice is confirmation, not a sin.
We do it again.
Same noisy delight. Different count.
Someday he’ll understand that doing it together is what counts.
October 10, 2015
My poem “Numerology” was published in my first chapbook, Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups. You can buy it on Amazon (paperback and Kindle), or get it free in Kindle Unlimited, search for “Richard Carl Subber”
Previously published in The Australia Times Poetry, miller’s pond poetry magazine, and Whispers.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
“…the ravell’d sleeve of care…”
wish I’d said that…(a bit of Shakespeare)
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My first name was rain: A dreamery of poems with 53 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Feb 3, 2020 | Book reviews, Books, Global climate change, Politics
human beings may not survive…
Book review:
Losing Earth: A Recent History
by Nathaniel Rich
New York: MCD, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019
206 pages
If you’re thinking that it’s just too much trouble to worry about global climate change and the prospect of a final end to human civilization, do read Losing Earth.
Rich lays it all out, in dispassionate history and an impassioned call for individual and collective action.
The stupefying truth is that nearly everything we know now about global climate change has been known by some sensible and honorable—and some greedy and dishonorable—men and women for the last 50 years.
Here’s the grisly truth: Losing Earth does not suggest any easy fix. There is no easy fix for the apocalyptic acceleration of global climate change, and the massive destruction of our living environment—our planet—that is already happening.
All of us need to try to empower leaders who will take the long view and do the right thing.
We need to “develop a strategy for expanding the limits of what is politically feasible.” The United States and our congress and our president must take the lead in any worldwide action that will be even partly successful.
For everyone, for you and for me, “the first requirement is to speak about the problem honestly: as a struggle for survival. This is the antithesis of the denialist approach. Once the stakes are precisely defined, the moral imperative is inescapable.” Start by telling yourself the truth.
We have to start saying out loud, to each other, that we love our children and our grandchildren with all our hearts, and we want to make it possible for them to live their full lives in some kind of comfort on this planet.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review: The House by the Sea
May Sarton’s travels, in her mind…
click here
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 10, 2020 | American history, Book reviews, Books, History, World history
American leadership never was
what we thought it was…
Book review:
Fire in the Lake:
The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam
by Frances FitzGerald (b1940), a Pulitzer Prize winner
Boston: An Atlantic Monthly Press Book, Little Brown and Company, 1972
491 pages
I don’t know how much of an audience there was for Fire in the Lake in 1972. I feel confident in guessing there wasn’t enough.
The American war in Vietnam was far from over in 1972 when FitzGerald wrote this densely researched journalistic review of U. S. policies and actions and ignorance in Southeast Asia. She makes it easier to understand why the American war effort was doomed from its earliest phase.
You should read Fire in the Lake to get the whole story as it was knowable in 1972. Be prepared to acknowledge that much of what you previously believed—and thought you knew—was wrong.
The American commitment to “containing Communism” was prominent, and tragically uninformed.
South Vietnam was the wrong place to try to “contain Communism,” no matter what that might mean.
There are more than 58,000 names on the walls of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Some of them are the names of my friends.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review:
Joseph Brant and His World
“Brant was fully a Mohawk…”
by James Paxton
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Seeing far: Selected poems with 47 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 9, 2020 | Global climate change, Human Nature, Politics, Reflections, Tidbits
actually, not an unthinkable thought…
“Owing in large measure to humankind’s
long, steadily accelerating career of habitat shattering,
the rate of extinction is currently
about a thousand times what is normal.
That’s how fast the planet’s biotic community
is losing member species these days…
I can’t get that extinction crisis out of my mind.
Extinction is not abstract in the least.
It’s the thousands of instances of the desolation
of being the last of one’s kind.”
Stephanie Mills, excerpt from “The One Who Steals the Fat,” The Sun magazine, January 2001
We’re not accustomed to thinking in truly absolute terms—think about it, extinction is the end.
Think again about your grandchildren.
Think again.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shakespeare’s Wife
Germaine Greer went overboard a bit…
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As with another eye: Poems of exactitude with 55 free verse and haiku poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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by Richard Subber | Jan 6, 2020 | Book reviews, Books, Global climate change, History, Reflections, World history
It’s worth a second read…
Book review:
On the Beach
by Nevil Shute (1899-1960)
New York: Vintage International, Vintage Books, 1957
312 pages
I could not read On the Beach again without taking on some of the terminal burden of the characters. I awakened some of my disturbing memories (Weltschmerz, perhaps) of reading it the first time, almost 60 years ago.
Maybe you think you know the story line: in the aftermath of worldwide nuclear destruction, an inescapable deadly radioactive miasma is finally devastating Australia. The land down under is the last refuge of human beings on the planet.
All of them know they’re going to die in a couple months. Many of them choose to live as if they don’t know it.
The reader doesn’t need to apply much imagination. On the Beach is a baldly powerful chronicle of the unyielding imperatives of human nature, including the impulse to work side by side with someone you love, planting a garden, hoping to share a rich crop next year, ignoring the darkness in the northern sky.
Nevil Shute’s story is not out of date.
I desperately fear that my grandchildren may be re-reading this book as they survive in the hills, trying to ignore the advancing seas below.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2020 All rights reserved.
Book review: Shantung Compound
They didn’t care much
about each other…
by Langdon Gilkey
click here
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Above all: Poems of dawn and more with 73 free verse poems,
and the rest of my poetry books are for sale on Amazon (paperback and Kindle)
and free in Kindle Unlimited, search Amazon for “Richard Carl Subber”
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