Birdsong makes us happy. Why?
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Riddle 2
Monday, 13 Apr 2015, 00:26
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What form an upper and lower mountain range?
Riddle
Friday, 10 Apr 2015, 02:34
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Edited by Richard Walker, Friday, 10 Apr 2015, 23:23
What can carry a house up a mountain?
Stream Haiku
Friday, 10 Apr 2015, 00:11
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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?
The Medium is the Message
Thursday, 9 Apr 2015, 01:20
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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.
Roman Frister
Tuesday, 7 Apr 2015, 03:02
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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.
Fishing
Tuesday, 7 Apr 2015, 00:19
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Edited by Richard Walker, Wednesday, 8 Apr 2015, 02:01
From its rock a cormorant
Watched the fishermen.
Thieves, thieves.
Dinosaur poets TM
Monday, 6 Apr 2015, 01:27
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what is/are Poets
Can they die and emerge again
like Dinosaurians
?
Bullet marks
Monday, 6 Apr 2015, 00:56
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So have you seen
Bullet marks on a wall?
And did it make you flinch?
A memory
Sunday, 5 Apr 2015, 03:10
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Do you remember in Greece,
we had that wobbly table,
and the waiter brought a melon rind?
No brainer
Saturday, 4 Apr 2015, 03:08
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Not a poem, or even a riddle.
What came first, the brain or the senses?
New rain Haiku
Friday, 3 Apr 2015, 00:29
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The smell of new rain.
A time for reflection.
And no umbrellas please.
Raindrops in the stream
Thursday, 2 Apr 2015, 00:27
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Raindrops in the stream.
I'm with my father again
Trying to see a fish.
What's a poem
Wednesday, 1 Apr 2015, 00:34
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Hands clasped behind me
I thought: a poem
Is a kind of snapshot.
Haiku in a gale
Tuesday, 31 Mar 2015, 00:58
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In this gale!
Who's that crawling across the road?
A plastic bag.
a question of owls
Monday, 30 Mar 2015, 02:04
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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.
Butterfly
Sunday, 29 Mar 2015, 02:41
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It's warm in my house.
A butterfly woke up.
How to save it?
Good News Haiku
Saturday, 28 Mar 2015, 02:42
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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.
Morning
Thursday, 26 Mar 2015, 00:55
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Edited by Richard Walker, Saturday, 28 Mar 2015, 01:53
The rooster doesn't want
To wake you. He's just singing
With the other birds.
Night Haiku
Wednesday, 25 Mar 2015, 03:55
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Edited by Richard Walker, Friday, 27 Mar 2015, 01:28
Getting up in the night.
That loose floorboard.
Groans like a ghost.
Sunup haiku
Wednesday, 25 Mar 2015, 03:32
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Edited by Richard Walker, Thursday, 26 Mar 2015, 00:46
What a daily grind!
Getting the sun out of bed.
All together birds.
First Spring HaIku
Wednesday, 25 Mar 2015, 00:24
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Edited by Richard Walker, Wednesday, 25 Mar 2015, 00:27
A frosty night in spring.
The rabbits don't seem cold.
Like me they hope.
Herb haiku
Saturday, 21 Mar 2015, 02:51
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Edited by Richard Walker, Monday, 23 Mar 2015, 00:30
The herbs
Form a miniature garden.
I feel honored.
International Poetry Day
Saturday, 21 Mar 2015, 01:26
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Edited by Richard Walker, Saturday, 21 Mar 2015, 02:53
Today 21 March is International Poetry Day.
So here's one of my favorite poems. I often think about it. Its author is Issa and the date it was written is March 1818.
A pheasant calls out
As someone blind
Crawls across the bridge.
Credit
Haiku adapted from Chris Drake's translation.
Calendar leaves haiku
Wednesday, 11 Mar 2015, 00:27
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Edited by Richard Walker, Thursday, 12 Mar 2015, 01:42
A movie cliche.
The wind takes the calendar leaves.
We still cry though.
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