• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me
Walking Commentary

Walking Commentary

Thoughts while waiting to walk from Manchester to Rome in 2022

  • ManRom22 Cancelled
  • Latest Comments
  • Archives

Haiku Way

March 9, 2020 by Simon Robinson Leave a Comment

9 March 2020 – 16:28 GMT – 10°C Light Rain – Co. Dublin, Ireland

the sound of the bat
flying in the thicket
is dark

A haiku I really like by Masaoka Shiki who in a short TB-curtailed life is credited with rescuing the poetry form of haiku. He urged poets to seek inspiration from the beauty of nature. He advised that we ‘encounter beautiful scenes and copy them realistically.’

In the bright room where I like to read, not just poetry, the rain is gently tapping the window glass.

We’ve a cymbidium orchid blooming there. It set for the first time in the several years since it was gifted to us. While our other phalenopsis orchids have remained in flower for up to six months, I read that two months is the max for cymbidium. Well, it’s two months already. So I guess I’ll be walking towards Rome when the blooms fall.

Cymbidium orchid that first flowered 11 Jan 20. Can it last three months or more?

There are three anthuriums too. Each gifted. Two came from my father, one a housewarming gift, the second marking a return home after two months of house-remodelling during the Sydney olympics. The third came from office colleagues who amusingly sent a penis-plant to me while I was undergoing prostate cancer treatment.

I suppose it’s a shrine of kinds. The cymbidium came by way of greenhouse clearance after the death of my father’s first cousin. An avid green thumb, he loved his hard-to-grow orchids. My father too is dead and he loved plants and designing gardens that never got built. And in the case of the prostate cancer, I’m five years down the road and discharged from care.

Back in 2017, I blogged a haiku from “Thames Way” by Diarmuid Fitzgerald, a book of haiku and tenka inspired by his walk from the Thames Barrier to the head of the river. I was doing sections of the same in preparation for a charity walk.

in the marches
without my map –
joyously lost

Filed Under: ManRom2021 Tagged With: booklink, diarmuid fitzgerald, flowers, haiku, masaoka shiki, photos, poetry, thames, walking

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe

You’ve been successfully subscribed to our newsletter!

Recent Comments

  • Simon Robinson on 2023 Subscriptions
  • Catherine Dunne on 2023 Subscriptions
  • Lia Mills on Apertures
  • Lia Mills on Limerick Walls
  • Simon Robinson on Via Graffiti

Categories

  • Anchoritism
  • Chapbooks
  • Fake Memoir
  • ManRom2021

Tags

ahmet altan albert einstein bbc birds bird watching booklink bracket books ireland brian greene burma cancer chapbook colum mccann computing Covid-19 dog dun laoghaire fabhappy flowers food geology geophysics hans rosling ireland irish times issued lia mills london movies nobel prize pandemic PEN international photo photography photos photozines plants poetry popular simonscarves the uplift kit travel ungrievable volcano walking walkingcommentary

Recent Posts

  • Rounded
  • Watershapes
  • Machine Driven
  • 2023 Subscriptions
  • Apertures

Archives

  • January 2023 (1)
  • December 2022 (1)
  • November 2022 (2)
  • October 2022 (1)
  • September 2022 (1)
  • August 2022 (1)
  • July 2022 (1)
  • June 2022 (1)
  • May 2022 (1)
  • April 2022 (1)
  • March 2022 (1)
  • February 2022 (1)
  • January 2022 (2)
  • December 2021 (2)
  • November 2021 (1)
  • October 2021 (1)
  • September 2021 (2)
  • August 2021 (1)
  • July 2021 (2)
  • May 2021 (9)
  • April 2021 (30)
  • March 2021 (31)
  • February 2021 (28)
  • January 2021 (31)
  • December 2020 (31)
  • November 2020 (30)
  • October 2020 (31)
  • September 2020 (30)
  • August 2020 (31)
  • July 2020 (31)
  • June 2020 (30)
  • May 2020 (31)
  • April 2020 (30)
  • March 2020 (31)

Footer

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Contact Me
  • ManRom22 Cancelled
  • Latest Comments
  • Archives

Subscribe

You’ve been successfully subscribed to our newsletter!

Copyright © 2023 · Revolution Pro on Genesis Framework