by Richard Subber | May 13, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
you hear what you hear…
andante, redux
Maybe we hear the music
we want to hear,
maybe each ear
hears its own sound,
maybe Beethoven
really didn’t have a problem,
maybe music really is
a many-splendored thing,
maybe the cranky tunes
I hear now in this empty lounge
are sweeter music
to the madame
who intently pushes the keys,
and stares at her old pages
cramped with penciled mementos,
and waves off
brief words from a passerby,
and hears that pastorale
as she played it long ago
with nimbler fingers
and a steady foot,
and charmed some children,
and some friends,
and a lover,
and nodded with Beethoven’s shade,
and never guessed
that she would play
that tune again
as I wander by
and briefly hear my version,
and wonder about her music.
Feb 20, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
“…and dipped in folly…”
only Poe knows how to say it…
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In other words: Poems for your eyes and ears with 64 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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | May 6, 2025 | My poetry, Poetry, Reflections
in my dreams…
before waking…
In this dream, again,
I will climb to high meadows
to invite another trace of you,
to feel a zephyr
that has filled your hair,
to see again your deep smile
as you climb the slope
to show me
how happiness arrives,
to bring a kiss
that fills me
with sweet longing
for your arms
that hold me,
in this dream that fills our sky.
May 23, 2023
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
The tiny sound of the surf…
…listen for the sea…”Listen,” my poem
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Apr 24, 2025 | Book reviews, Books, Human Nature, Reflections
it’s not the last obscenity…
Book review:
Aging: An Apprenticeship
Nan Narboe, ed.
Portland, OR: Red Notebook Press, 2018
286 pages
Narboe creates a handy and wide-ranging collection of reflections on the art, science, and humanity of the aging process. More than 50 authors tell it like they think it is, for folks nearing the increasingly ordinary age of 50, and for folks in their 50s, 60s, 70s , 80s, and 90s and beyond. If you’re not in one of those groups, you will be sooner than you think.
Of course, the explicit premise of most of the authors in Aging: An Apprenticeship is that life can be good (or not), aging happens to everyone, and dying is the end game.
Gloria Steinem’s contribution is on point, completely tolerable, and instructive. She says:
“After all, we are communal creatures who must mirror each other to know who we are. Every living thing ages and dies, yet humans seem to be the only species that thinks about aging and thinks about dying. Surely, we are meant to use this ability, especially in a country that suffers so much from concealing aging and dying as if they were the last obscenities.”
For Aging: An Apprenticeship, Narboe collects essays that range from whimsical to doggone serious. Each author offers a very personal argument that aging and dying are 100% natural.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
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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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by Richard Subber | Apr 8, 2025 | Books, My poetry, Poetry, Reflections, Tidbits
blinking, not blinking…
Owning the trail
The sun was high,
the patient rays
striped the forest floor,
tree tops swayed enough
to nudge the shadows,
a bird sang half a song
way down the hill,
an angry squirrel
sailed across the trail
and stared at me,
he didn’t blink.
I walked the next turn,
and stared without blinking,
an eight-point buck
looked back at me,
he stood still
as his woman and kid
rambled across the path
and disappeared
in the hydrangea,
he didn’t budge,
he seemed to be daring me
to make a move.
He showed no fear,
he owned the trail,
I was the stranger with two legs,
I looked at him for moments,
I faced him moments more
as I shuffled back
around the turn,
and shambled from his world.
The sun was high,
the shadows trembled,
I walked away through empty woods.
February 6, 2025
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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by Richard Subber | Mar 25, 2025 | Politics, Power and inequality, Reflections, Tidbits
forget the small potatoes…
“…stop seeking the impossible,
the short-sighted,
and the unnecessary.”
from The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday and Stephen Hanselman
New York: Portfolio/Penguin, 2016
p. 101
Of course, I realize that each person has a personal definition of “the impossible, the short-sighted, and the unnecessary.”
The point is:
Forget about what you can’t change, and forget about the small potato stuff.
Commit to doing a good thing.
Commit to resisting the bad stuff that touches you in ways you can avoid.
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Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: Ethan Frome
not being satisfied with less…
by Edith Wharton
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 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 | Mar 23, 2025 | Books, My poetry, Poetry, Politics, Reflections, Tidbits
Too many gulfs…
Hand me that hammer
This lightening sky pulls my eye
upward from newly darkening earth.
Our troubled plain
has no points of light just now.
We face fears, terrors, hates, imprecations,
repudiations, exclusions…
Too many gulfs appearing,
too few bridges imagined
in the grim thoughts of too many.
I will build one bridge today,
I welcome this lightening sky
to ease my work.
November 9, 2016
I work on building a bridge every day.
I try to do a good thing every day.
That’s good for me and for America.
It helps to keep me sane.
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My poetry. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2025 All rights reserved.
Book review: All The President’s Men
The men and women
who crave power…
by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 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”
Your comments are welcome—tell me what you’re thinking.
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