Magazine Posts

So long tomorrow.
Goodbye yesterday.
What happens today,
When you've gone away?

Wind and rain,
splattering the glass,
freshens the air,
as a storm just passed.

Rocks and soil,
sprinkled with rain.
Dimpled the look,
no longer just plain.

When angels sing,
their voices sweet,
what a divine,
heavenly treat.

Lest you think
your lost,
in a heavenly abode,
remember love is no cost.

Writing out the words
which appear in my head,
is the way I remember,
else, I forget is my dread.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Now this was a view with a thrill. From Mount Tschirgant in the Alps, you can see not only nearby towns and distant Tyrolean peaks, but also, weather permitting, stars, nebulas, and the band of the Milky Way Galaxy. What made the arduous climb worthwhile this night, though, was another peak -- the peak of the 2018 Perseids Meteor Shower. As hoped, dispersing clouds allowed a picturesque sky-gazing session that included many faint meteors, all while a carefully positioned camera took a series of exposures. Suddenly, a thrilling meteor -- bright and colorful -- slashed down right next to the nearly vertical band of the Milky Way. As luck would have it, the camera caught it too. Therefore, a new image in the series was quickly taken with one of the sky-gazers posing on the nearby peak. Later, all of the images were digitally combined.

Photo by Nicholas Roemmelt (Venture Photography)

Wooden fence rails,
as far as I could see.
Bleached by the Sun,
How long could it be?

Miles and miles
of wooden fence rail,
impressive it was.
It might never fail.

A beautiful fence,
my looking didn't tire.
Thank the lord,
They didn't use barbed wire.

Barbed wire, the great
ruiner of jeans,
one rip from it,
you had new seams.

Words spin freely,
from out my mind,
about loving another,
and not being unkind.

Slanting rays of topaz,
floating through the air,
promising salvation,
removing the despair.

Sunlight, twinkling through,
branches with mottled leaves,
as flickering shadows dance
with song. In Nature I believe.

Is it a lack of trust,
which I now see?
Is it my unbelief,
about what is to be?

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This stunning infrared image was released one year ago as the James Webb Space Telescope began its exploration of the cosmos. The view of the early Universe toward the southern constellation Volans was achieved in 12.5 hours of exposure with Webb's NIRCam instrument. Of course the stars with six spikes are well within our own Milky Way. Their diffraction pattern is characteristic of Webb's 18 hexagonal mirror segments operating together as a single 6.5 meter diameter primary mirror. The thousands of galaxies flooding the field of view are members of the distant galaxy cluster SMACS0723-73, some 4.6 billion light-years away. Luminous arcs that seem to infest the deep field are even more distant galaxies though. Their images are distorted and magnified by the dark matter dominated mass of the galaxy cluster, an effect known as gravitational lensing. Analyzing light from two separate arcs below the bright spiky star, Webb's NIRISS instrument indicates the arcs are both images of the same background galaxy. And that galaxy's light took about 9.5 billion years to reach the James Webb Space Telescope.