Contributor Posts

When love of another
shakes up your reasoning,
all you think about is your emotions.
When the love is for your wife,
of many years, who no longer
remembers you specifically
but knows you are the one
contact she has daily and
professes her love to you,
moment after moment.
There isn't any rationalization
which will satisfy this loss.
I placed my trust in God,
for a happy outcome after
she made it through lung cancer.
In remission now but I have
lost my faith in God with the
insidiousness of Dementia.

Grey were the clouds,
clinging to the trees,
dampening the forest floor,
awaiting a new dawn,
bringing light to the night,
as we begin a new day.
What new adventure awaits?
What old problems, to solve?

When you say, you love people
but not the complications
relationships bring. What does
that mean?
I wish I knew the answer,
to the eternal question,
When does friendship end?
Or does it? When does love
begin? Or is it just an extension
of friendship?

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What do you call a cosmic puzzle that no one expected to see? In this case, Odd Radio Circles, aka ORCs. ORC-1 typifies the enigmatic five objects, only visible at radio frequencies, that were serendipitously discovered in 2019 using the new Australian SKA Pathfinder radio array. The final image in the featured video uses 2021 data from the South African MeerKAT array to reveal more detail. The radio data, assigned turquoise colors, are combined with a Dark Energy Survey optical/IR map. The animated artist’s illustration explores just one idea about the ORCs’ origins. If two supermassive black holes merge in the center of a galaxy, the associated shockwaves could generate rings of radio radiation. These grow to fill the video frame. The video zooms out so the expansion the ORC can be tracked until it is about a million light-years across. Fortunately, the up-coming Square Kilometer Array can help test this and other promising scenarios.

Love a word,
4 simple letters,
With so many
Complicated results.

I like you,
It's easy to say,
But if I say it,
You'll run away.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

When two planets pass on the night sky, they can usually be seen near each other for a week or more. In the case of this planetary conjunction, Venus and Mars passed within 4 degrees of each other earlier this month. The featured image was taken a few days prior, when Venus was slowing rising in the pre-dawn sky, night by night, while Mars was slowly setting. The image, a four-part mosaic, was captured in Brazil from the small town Teresópolis. Besides Venus and Mars, the morning sky now also includes the more distant planet Saturn. Of course, these conjunctions are only angular -- Venus, Mars, and Saturn continue to orbit the Sun in very different parts of our Solar System. Next week, the angle between Saturn and Mars will drop to below a quarter of a degree.

Photo by Carlos Kiko Fairbairn

Sit I, here
pen in hand
at 2:30 A.M.
Been awake
for an hour.
Why can't
I sleep?
A question,
haunts me,
then I recall
my grandfather
telling me
he lived
on under
4 hours
of sleep,
when he
was my age.
Didn't know
it was
hereditary.

A silence, whispers
past the corners of my mind,
covering my being with
an unprofessed love.
Nurturing Sun casting shadows,
bringing breath of life.
I lay awake, alongside my wife,
marveling at the fine lines
which gently, so gently
compliment the smoothness
of skin covering her cheeks.
Brown eyes closed, as she sleeps.
I want to talk with you,
as we did many years ago,
but know it will never be
the same. Never again,
will we share memories,
only mine, alone, as I
am mired in this existence.

Barren the ground
swept by the wind,
moss covered rocks,
wet with the dew.
Barren the branches,
naked to view,
while I sit alone
waiting for you.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

The southernmost part of the Milky Way contains not only the stars of the Southern Cross, but the closest star system to our Sun -- Alpha Centauri. The Southern Cross itself is topped by the bright, yellowish star Gamma Crucis. A line from Gamma Crucis through the blue star at the bottom of the cross, Acrux, points toward the south celestial pole, located just above the small island in the featured picture -- taken in early March. That island is Madivaru of the Maldives in the Indian Ocean. Against faint Milky Way starlight, the dark Coal Sack Nebula lies just left of the cross, while farther left along the Milky Way are the bright stars Alpha Centauri (left) and Beta Centauri (Hadar). Alpha Centauri A, a Sun-like star anchoring a three-star system with exoplanets, is a mere 4.3 light-years distant. Seen from Alpha Centauri, our own Sun would be a bright yellowish star in the otherwise recognizable constellation Cassiopeia. Almost Hyperspace: Random APOD Generator

Photo by Petr HorálekESOPhoto AmbassadorInst. of Physics in Opava