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Down the river,
without a boat.
Beware the rocks,
to stay afloat.
Fun were the days,
swimming until dark,
out for adventure,
not for a lark.

Wide were the fields of
golden wheats golden heads.
This was the time for
wheat harvest of grain for bread.

The slight growl of the combine
as it made its way, to
harvesting the grain,
was the task for the day.

Cut a wide swath, only the head,
leaving the straw stem standing.
Loading the trucks, grain the load,
then to the grain elevator
away down the road.

"Stand tall in the saddle",
someone once spoke.
I didn't understand,
thinking it was a joke.
Up on the horse,
a saddled-up mare,
on a cattle drive,
I was now aware.
A freshman in high school,
now on the trail
of moving these cows
to the corral jail.
I was a novice
to this kind of work,
but the horses made
sure, I didn't look like a jerk.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Heading for its closest approach to the Sun or perihelion on December 20, comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) remains a sight for telescopic observers as it sweeps through planet Earth's southern hemisphere skies. First time visitor from the remote Oort cloud this comet PanSTARRS sports a greenish coma and whitish dust tail about half a degree long at the upper left in a deep image from September 21. It also shares the starry field of view toward the constellation Scorpius with another comet, 73P/Schwassmann-Wachmann 3, seen about 1 degree below and right of PanSTARRS. Astronomers estimate that first time visitor comet C/2017 K2 (PanSTARRS) has been inbound from the Oort cloud for some 3 million years along a hyperbolic orbit. Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 is more familiar though. The periodic comet loops through its own elliptical orbit, from just beyond the orbit of Jupiter to the vicinity of Earth's orbit, once every 5.4 years. Just passing in the night, this comet PanSTARRS is about 20 light-minutes from Earth in the September 21 image. Seen to be disintegrating since 1995, Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 was about 7.8 light-minutes away.

Photo by Jose J. Chambo

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

At opposition, opposite the Sun in Earth's sky, late last month Jupiter is also approaching perihelion, the closest point to the Sun in its elliptical orbit, early next year. That makes Jupiter exceptionally close to our fair planet, currently resulting in excellent views of the Solar System's ruling gas giant. On September 27, this sharp image of Jupiter was recorded with a small telescope from a backyard in Florence, Arizona. The stacked video frames reveal the massive world bounded by planet girdling winds. Dark belts and light zones span the gas giant, along with rotating oval storms and its signature Great Red Spot. Galilean moon Ganymede is below and right in the frame. The Solar System's largest moon and its shadow are in transit across the southern Jovian cloud tops.

Photo by Andrew McCarthy

Tell me, please tell me your name.
I do not like playing this game.
Asking questions, hearing "I don't know"
makes me sorry. May I go?
Words in my mind, thinking of thee,
my love for you, may never be.

I searched to find
an epiphany about
a late discovery,
using names,
becoming absurd
if you don't
know a word.

Great grandfather's
name was Fred.
He's long gone,
but in his stead,
he named a son,
with the name Fred.

The years came
and years went,
I can't explain
the blessed event,
when Cousin Fred,
was born anew.

He's the eldest,
I am too.
Why write of
things like this?
When no one sings
and there is no remiss.

Whole, the World
will soon be,
if I still have friends
like thee and thee.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

NGC 4631 is a big beautiful spiral galaxy. Seen edge-on, it lies only 25 million light-years away in the well-trained northern constellation Canes Venatici. The galaxy's slightly distorted wedge shape suggests to some a cosmic herring and to others its popular moniker, The Whale Galaxy. Either way, it is similar in size to our own Milky Way. In this sharp color image, the galaxy's yellowish core, dark dust clouds, bright blue star clusters, and red star forming regions are easy to spot. A companion galaxy, the small elliptical NGC 4627 is just above the Whale Galaxy. Faint star streams seen in deep images are the remnants of small companion galaxies disrupted by repeated encounters with the Whale in the distant past. The Whale Galaxy is also known to have spouted a halo of hot gas glowing in X-rays.

Photo by Michael Sherick

Long before the morning,
long before the dawn,
I awoke to find
my mind had moved along.
What is the reason,
why would I feel this way?
I couldn't separate tomorrow,
from the memories of yesterday.

Chili mac and cheese! Who can resist two favorite comfort foods combined into one? Take two comfort food favorites and combine them into one cheesy skillet. Not too spicy, so perfect for a family meal (add hot sauce if you like heat!). Click to read Aaron Hutcherson's recipe.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

What happens if you crash a spaceship into an asteroid? In the case of NASA's DART spaceship and the small asteroid Dimorphos, as happened last week, you get quite a plume. The goal of the planned impact was planetary protection -- to show that the path of an asteroid can be slightly altered, so that, if done right, a big space rock will miss the Earth. The high brightness of the plume, though, was unexpected by many, and what it means remains a topic of research. One possibility is that 170-meter wide Dimorphos is primarily a rubble pile asteroid and the collision dispersed some of the rubble in the pile. The featured time-lapse video covers about 20 minutes and was taken from the Les Makes Observatory on France's Reunion Island, off the southeast coast of southern Africa. One of many Earth-based observatories following the impact, the initial dot is primarily Dimorphos's larger companion: asteroid Didymos. Most recently, images show that the Didymos - Dimorphos system has developed comet-like tails. DART Impact on Dimorphos: Notable images submitted to APOD

I stuck out my foot,
reaching for the stair.
I missed the step,
for it was not there.
It should have been solid,
but now I'm in the air.
A thought entered my head,
find something soft,
to avoid being dead.
As luck would have it,
there was a large bush,
and I fell in the middle,
right on my tush..