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Richard Walker

Come on Time

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Edited by Richard Walker, Thursday, 9 July 2015, 01:45

Time.

You'll win.

We will have a good fight first.

No mercy of course.

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Richard Walker

Consolation

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If we had never had been, you and I

We would still have loved.

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Richard Walker

Bee Orchid

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Edited by Richard Walker, Thursday, 9 July 2015, 00:41

Here's a Bee Orchid I photoed on my iPhone last Friday in Milton Keynes UK.


These plants are beautiful and fascinating. The photo is a little blurry but pretend you are a bee, it will lend allure.

The Bee Orchid is one a genus of orchids which try to trick insects of a particular kind into trying to have sex with them.

They visually mimic a female of the insect species concerned and even produce the identical pheromone to attract the male insect.

When the male insect visits the flower and engages in "pseudo copulation" some pollen sticks to its knees and is carried off to pollinate another plant.

At least that's what happens in the Mediterranean, which is where these orchids first evolved.The Bee Orchid has spread northwards though, but without the bee.The one in the pic above almost certainly had a parent that was self-pollinating.

Because of this adaptation the Bee Orchid seems to be expanding its territory in Britain. Look out for it - from mid June to mid July, if you pass a patch of waving grasses with two or three different wildflowers visible, see if you can spot an orchid.

In history orchids have associations even more sordid than their subversion of bees. The name orchid means testicle in ancient (and I think modern) Greek. This is because the plants when dug up apparently have two tubers. Is it true? I don't know, I've never dig these plants up.

This probably influenced the astonishing Anthanasuis Kircher [1] when he suggested that Bee Orchids grew from bulls' semen, because bees grew from bulls' corpses. The writer was a massive scholar, seldom if ever exceeded, and I would never detract from that. I've always loved scholarship and piling up information and knowledge. I'm doing it now.

But I don't go for the bull.

One counterexample always shows a theory is wrong.

There were absolutely no bulls, either dead or alive, anywhere even remotely near where I saw these orchids in Milton Keynes.

All the same bees are implicated in Bee Orchids and there have been studies of whether male bees that hit on orchids reduce their chances of passing on their genes. It's a delicate  evolutionary balance. But the consensus is the male bees do waste semen.

The plot thickens. If you know about the 'Doctrine of Signatures' from my previous posts about plants, or from elsewhere, you can probably work out what bodily part orchid tubers were once considered good for. But it's all a load of orchids.

[1] Kirchner's work is a sort of Wikipedia for its time. Online at http://ouhos.org/2011/09/14/athanasius-kircher-mundus-subterraneus-1665/

[2] The uses and misuses of orchids in medicine. Online at http://qjmed.oxfordjournals.org/content/98/9/625





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Richard Walker

Clerihew

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Edited by Richard Walker, Saturday, 4 July 2015, 13:26

Che Guevara

Always wore mascara.

He used to say

It went with his beret.

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Richard Walker

The Snail

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Edited by Richard Walker, Thursday, 2 July 2015, 00:26
a snail
on the gangplank of existence
just keeps moving
so do we all



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Richard Walker

Haiku for the tall and straight

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Edited by Richard Walker, Tuesday, 30 June 2015, 00:37

In summer when the corn is tall

And sunset seen through poplars

I wish.



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Richard Walker

Rose in Summer Haiku 2

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And again

Passing these roses in the streetlight

You would be the stolen one, 

And not only your heart.

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Richard Walker

Summer and Rose Haiku

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summer is very bad for us.

tonight, coming home

a stolen rose.

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Richard Walker

She Kissed Me

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Edited by Richard Walker, Wednesday, 24 June 2015, 00:21

When we met, she kissed me.

I was quite surprised. It seems

She'd read last Summer's poems.

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Richard Walker

Winter in Summer Haiku

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Edited by Richard Walker, Tuesday, 23 June 2015, 02:20

Talking. Warm breaths blow.

Over empty glasses. The sound.

Suddenly reminds us of winter.

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Richard Walker

Summer Bridge Crossing

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Edited by Richard Walker, Monday, 22 June 2015, 02:22

Truth to me then was,

I felt the bridge ironwork

warm in my hand.

In the millstream,

I saw two differently colored lights.

In the distance

I heard one dog barking.

Now I relished this summer night

And made it my truth.


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Richard Walker

We Are Honourable After All

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Suppose you were told

You were dying.

You'd still feed the cat.

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Richard Walker

Clerihew Newton #2

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Sir Isaac Newton

Slept on a futon.

He gave gravitation

As his explanation.

 

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Richard Walker

Clerihew

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Edited by Richard Walker, Tuesday, 16 June 2015, 01:30

Sir Isaac Newton

Slept on a futon.

He felt strong indignation

Concerning gravitation.

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Richard Walker

Clerihew

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Edited by Richard Walker, Monday, 15 June 2015, 00:33

King John

Had far too much on.

He decided it was smarter

To sign the Magna Carta.

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Richard Walker

Show No Summer Favourites

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Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 14 June 2015, 02:56

Show no summer favourites

Not even the heavy white lilacs dipping in the stream.

Even though your mother loved them best

Show no summer favourites.

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Richard Walker

Cats 'n Wolves

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Edited by Richard Walker, Saturday, 13 June 2015, 00:26

Are dogs and wolves the same species?

Yes, in a sense, because dogs and wolves can interbreed.

But the story is more complex. It's long been thought that the grey (or timber) wolf is the ancestor of dogs.

Controversial new research suggests that dogs and grey wolves are probably both descended from a common ancestor wolf, now extinct. They had the same grand parents, n times removed.

Modern dogs and wolves share 99% of their DNA (I think it is), but that small difference seems to be responsible for (amongst other things) a big change in behavior.

Dogs want to be ordered. Wolves make up their own mind.

Tell a dog 'no' and it may obey.

Tell the most human-friendly wolf 'no' and it will ignore you.

Like a cat, in fact.

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Richard Walker

Clerihew

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Edited by Richard Walker, Friday, 12 June 2015, 01:33

Alexander the Great.

Was always late.

So he got shot.

Of the Gordian knot.

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Richard Walker

Clerihew

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Edited by Richard Walker, Thursday, 11 June 2015, 01:03

Socrates thought parsley.

Was ghastly.

He took hemlock instead.

Now he's dead.

 

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Richard Walker

JS Bach in State Pen

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Edited by Richard Walker, Wednesday, 10 June 2015, 02:59

Listening to the radio yesterday, I was amazed to hear J.S. Bach once did time.

Well not exactly.

As I understand it, he got a new job (in 1717) but his current employer (Duke of Weimar and ruler of that state) didn't want to let him go. So Bach was put in jail. After a month he was released.

But his detention is an example of Power speaking unto Art.

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Richard Walker

Clerihew

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Edited by Richard Walker, Tuesday, 9 June 2015, 02:34

J.S. Bach, 

Fancied a lark.

So he tried misbehaviour,

With his well tempered clavier.

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Richard Walker

Schrödinger's vets

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Edited by Richard Walker, Tuesday, 9 June 2015, 00:28

 

http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/About-your-cat-Mr-Schroedinger-I-have-good-news-and-bad-news-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i13222248_.htm

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Richard Walker

New blog post

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Poppy, I was tempted to pick you

Because I wanted your beauty to last forever,

But I couldn't do it.

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Richard Walker

Beauty vs Time 1/3

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Edited by Richard Walker, Friday, 5 June 2015, 01:31

Here's the first four lines of another sonnet I've learned, and frequently recite when walking home.

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea
But sad mortality o’er-sways their power,
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea,
Whose action is no stronger than a flower?

This is so striking, its author so famous, it must have received legions of analysis. I've read none of them. This is my take entirely.

It jerks us around and brings in multiple images, like an early film, a silent movie. Try to imagine the camera angles and sound track.

First we see things that we think long lasting. The camera pans around. But then we are  reminded nothing lasts for ever, everything will decay with time.

Things that seemed permanent are destroyed. Castles collapse. Sea defenses erode away. We hear the roar.

But where did rage come from? What is the savage attack animal? Who can defend?

Beauty steps bravely forward and - this is one of the astonishing things about the poem - Beauty is a lawyer, pleading the case for a reprieve.This legal metaphor is one of the most surprising and amazing ways in which the focus of the poem takes us by surprise almost line by line

How strong is Beauty's case? Who is the jury?

Try to answer without reading the next episode.

 

 

 

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Richard Walker

Moon Looks Down Haiku

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Ow! Smelling mimosa, I reached up.

Grabbed holly.

Spring happens.

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