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Richard Walker

I wandered lonely as a celandine

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One of my interests is wild flowers. Here a picture I took of celandines outside the front of my house. The celandine is one of my favorite flowers and there are hosts of them where I live.

Not a lot of people know that Wordsworth wrote a poem "The Lesser Celandine" about this flower. Personally I think it's rather dull and I can see why it's less well known than Wordsworth's other flower poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud", alias "Daffodils".

Although the latter is one of the most famous poems in the English language it's never really attracted me. I much prefer Herrick's "To Daffodils"

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
         You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
         Has not attain'd his noon.
                        Stay, stay,
                Until the hasting day
                        Has run
                But to the even-song;
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.

 

I think that's a beautiful evocation of the transitory nature of things.

 

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Richard Walker

New Moon Haiku

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Stopping on the bridge tonight.

New moon. New thoughts.

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Richard Walker

Marie Curie

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Edited by Richard Walker, Thursday, 23 Apr 2015, 00:46

Marie Curie. A person of extraordinary intelligence and courage. On the wall of the British Library is inscribed a quote

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.

I've passed it many times, and it always give me a little extra hope, because I am not very brave.

 

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Richard Walker

Calendar

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On my calendar

Three boats, 24 houses and 22 ducks.

Why doesn't it hang straight? (It doesn't)

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Richard Walker

Bumblebee Haiku

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Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 19 Apr 2015, 03:06

Bumblebee you said it was Spring.

I didn't listen.

Until today.

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Richard Walker

What does apathy feel like?

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Edited by Richard Walker, Friday, 17 Apr 2015, 02:40

I'm endlessly fascinated by the relationship between brain function and our sense of self.

Many people who survive a stroke experience apathy. This is usually associated with depression, common amongst stroke survivors. But a minority may have suffered front brain damage that has affected emotional response. The loss may be severe.

In its most profound form, what would this apathy be like? Would it be loss of energy, motivation and interest in everyday life? Would it mean insensitivity to pleasure or pain? The word apathy was made up in the 18th century from the Greek for suffering and meant at first "without suffering", rather than lethargy, which is the way the word is often interpreted today.

It could be closer to the original 18th century sense. Perhaps it is far more than demotivation or joylessness.

Maybe you'd know about emotions intellectually, and even display them, but you'd be acting. Inside there would no emotional experience at all. Not even a gap; just nothing.

 

 

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Richard Walker

Why cross the road?

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Snail, how can I save you in this dark?

Conscience draws me back to help.

Prosper on the other side.

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Richard Walker

Birdsong

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Birdsong makes us happy. Why?

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Richard Walker

Riddle 2

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What form an upper and lower mountain range?

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Richard Walker

Riddle

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Edited by Richard Walker, Friday, 10 Apr 2015, 23:23

What can carry a house up a mountain?

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Richard Walker

Stream Haiku

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Edited by Richard Walker, Friday, 10 Apr 2015, 01:08

Stop! Go back

Listen again to the running stream.

Aren't you glad to hear it?

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Richard Walker

The Medium is the Message

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Edited by Richard Walker, Thursday, 9 Apr 2015, 01:22

A camera is like a human eye.

The basic plan

light from world --> focus --> image falls on sensors

But photography can work without any focusing. If we put refractors -- glass, resin, minerals and so on -- directly on film and expose it briefly to light, something will be recorded. In that case refractors have replaced the lens and it's them we are photographing.

So, literally, the medium is the message.

This can produce striking results. Visit the website of Alan Jaras for example.

This reminds me of an experiment I tried many years ago. Photographic plates preceded the film which came before digital cameras.

If you are not familiar with plates, they are just like film but on glass not plastic. Plates were the staple of photography until films came along and spoiled it.

Just as (and rightly) some still prefer film to digital, back then plates were still around, because some people preferred them.

What was the experiment? We put a couple of plates up on the roof, in a a plastic bag, and left them there a couple of months. Later, when we remembered, we fetched them down and developed them. In hope of what?

Cosmic rays. Some energetic particle that may have set off from a supernova billions of light years away and billions of years ago, could have arrived on our roof and created a record on our plates.

And one had.

No lens needed. The universe is on your rooftop.

 

 

 

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Richard Walker

Roman Frister

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Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 12 Apr 2015, 02:54

Roman Frister died recently.

He was a concentration camp survivor (then aged 15), later journalist, book author, and founder of a university school of journalism.

Frister's frank and harrowing tale of being in the camp describes a horrible moral dilemma.

Camp inmates had to wear the regulation cap for morning roll call. Anyone bareheaded was instantly shot. One night Frister's cap was stolen.

In the dark of the hut he found a cap that belonged to someone else. Next day he heard that person shot.

Frister lived with this and a half-century on wrote a memoir, whose title The Cap was taken from the incident.

I read the book, some years ago now, but it still haunts me.

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Richard Walker

Fishing

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Edited by Richard Walker, Wednesday, 8 Apr 2015, 02:01

From its rock a cormorant

Watched the fishermen.

Thieves, thieves.

 

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Richard Walker

Dinosaur poets TM

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what is/are Poets

Can they die and emerge again

like Dinosaurians

?

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Richard Walker

Bullet marks

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So have you seen

Bullet marks on a wall?

And did it make you flinch?

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Richard Walker

A memory

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Do you remember in Greece,

we had that wobbly table,

and the waiter brought a melon rind?

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Richard Walker

No brainer

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Not a poem, or even a riddle.

What came first, the brain or the senses?

 

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Richard Walker

New rain Haiku

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The smell of new rain.

A time for reflection.

And no umbrellas please.

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Richard Walker

Raindrops in the stream

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Raindrops in the stream.

I'm with my father again

Trying to see a fish.

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Richard Walker

What's a poem

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Hands clasped behind me

I thought: a poem

Is a kind of snapshot.

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Richard Walker

Haiku in a gale

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In this gale!

Who's that crawling across the road?

A plastic bag.

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Richard Walker

a question of owls

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Edited by Richard Walker, Tuesday, 7 Apr 2015, 00:58

I walked home

Surrounded by the clamour of owls.

Always the same question.

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Richard Walker

Butterfly

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It's warm in my house.

A butterfly woke up.

How to save it?

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Richard Walker

Good News Haiku

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Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 3 May 2015, 01:00

Mr Lion, good news.

You got 99% of the popular vote. What more do you want?

The species of the others.

 

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