Into the night with
darkest of sky,
he waited patiently for
the Moon to pass by.
The brightness, came slow
and gradually.
He could see where to
step, walking gingerly.
Trying to be quiet so he
wouldn't be heard.
Creeping so closely to
that elusive bird.
One that is a beauty,
known all around.
This was the place where
it could be found.
The colorful feathers reminded
him of you,
when in pursuit of the elusive,
beautiful, Cockatoo.

Why do I feel alone at night,
when she lies so close to me?
It's because she knows not my name,
and that is our fate and destiny.

Shades of Shale,
a flat type
of volcanic rock,
that would slide
down the hill
where ever you walked.
Yards of rock,
on a side hill,
careful to be
on Nature's spill.
Take one step,
balance a must,
shale will slide,
gliding on dust.
Down the hill,
so carefully,
learning to walk
or how to ski.
Noisy it was,
a rattling sound,
frightening the animals
who were still around.

I didn't know; nothing was said,
at that moment. A sense of dread
fell over me. The news isn't good,
he said to me. I now understood,
when he said Lung Cancer, Stage three.

Some days it seems, I have been
married my entire life
to a beautiful woman
who is now my wife.
Of all the things that I could be,
only happened because of she.
The support she gave so readily,
was done with elegance and dignity.
What will happen, when she goes away?
I suppose I will know on that fateful day.

Over the river, through the trees, they came.
We were being over ran, in this war game.
We fought in the trenches, side by side,
but at battle end, we all had died.
Please say a prayer for my dear friend,
He fought bravely for you until the end.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Why are these meteor trails nearly parallel? Because they were all shed by the same space rock and so can be traced back to the same direction on the sky: the radiant of the Quadrantid Meteor Shower. This direction used to be toward the old constellation of Quadrans Muralis, hence the name Quadrantids, but when the International Astronomical Union formulated its list of modern constellations in 1922, this constellation did not make the list. Even though the meteors are now considered to originate from the recognized constellation of Bootes, the old name stuck. Regardless of the designation, every January the Earth moves through a dust stream and bits of this dust glow as meteors as they heat up in Earth's atmosphere. The featured image composite was taken on January 4 with a picturesque snowy Slovakian landscape in the foreground, and a deep-exposure sky prominently featuring the constellation Orion in the background. The red star Betelgeuse appears unusually dim -- its fading over the past few months is being tracked by astronomers. Teachers: APOD in the Classroom

Photo by Petr Horálek

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Of all things, in this World I've seen,
there has never been anything
like a well oiled machine.
The sound of that clickety clack,
raised the hairs on your back.
A clatter of valves, camshaft of course,
the exhaust of the rear engine,
air cooled 911 Porsche.

I know not what I write,
I know not at all.
The words that pour out
are not mine I write,
for there seem to be no
thought in my mind,
other than writing the words.
Hopefully they're not trite
but have meaning to you,
it's for you that I care,
no matter the issue,
no matter the time,
my wish for you
is Peace and be kind.

Laying in bed, words all of jumble;
I'm not writing them down,
for I will not tumble,
into this pit of worry
or feeling sorry for me.
Oh dear God, help me out of this mess
of seeing my beloved, slipping away.
What can I do, on this miserable day?
My love for her is still there;
She knows me not, I'll not despair,
for I know her and always will.
My love for her gives me a thrill.
I know these words, corny they are,
but they're my words, they surely are.

You talk to me often
when at the mall.
If I ask you a question
you say, "I don't recall."
I tell you, "I love you"
that's easy to say,
but you don't seem
to hear me and walk away.
The sadness then
comes over me
and I pray once again
for you not to see,
my sadness
for this time of our life
and its destiny.

A bone chilling wind
branches laden with ice
power outages

There is no weeping.
There is no sound.
There is no pain.
There is nothing around.
There is no sadness.
There is nothing here.
There is I confess,
There is a place.
There will be too.
There is your face
Looking back at you.

I looked at the wall,
purple it was,
covered with vines
and a pinkish fuzz.
I saw some movement,
off to the side,
when I looked again
my eyes opened wide,
for there, by the trunk
of a short, squatty tree,
a creature was looking
directly at me.
A small creature,
about three feet tall,
something you'd find
if you went to the mall.
It had four legs
and a tail so very long,
I knew at a glance
that it didn't belong
here in the room
looking at me,
so I woke from my stupor
and set it free.
Free from my mind
where it's life began;
free to enter my dream
once more, again.

“The impression we derive from a book, depends much less upon its real contents, than upon the temper of mind and preparation with which we read it" ..........Click here to read Maria Popova's article on Brain Pickings

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Are your eyes good enough to see the Crab Nebula expand? The Crab Nebula is cataloged as M1, the first on Charles Messier's famous list of things which are not comets. In fact, the Crab is now known to be a supernova remnant, an expanding cloud of debris from the explosion of a massive star. The violent birth of the Crab was witnessed by astronomers in the year 1054. Roughly 10 light-years across today, the nebula is still expanding at a rate of over 1,000 kilometers per second. Over the past decade, its expansion has been documented in this stunning time-lapse movie. In each year from 2008 to 2017, an image was produced with the same telescope and camera from a remote observatory in Austria. Combined in the time-lapse movie, the 10 images represent 32 hours of total integration time. The sharp, processed frames even reveal the dynamic energetic emission within the incredible expanding Crab. The Crab Nebula lies about 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus. Teachers: APOD in the Classroom

Video by Detlef Hartmann

Oh, oh I said
as I turned the next page.
What happened here
is a small outrage.
A page out of order,
is what I saw,
an obvious error
or a simple flaw,
of my writing too fast,
of the words, that I know
that spray from my past.
Wait a minute; Just woah,
it's not a mistake
as it really does matter,
when writing the words
it is not idle chatter.

As a young boy my only wish
was to grab some bait and go fish.
Fish down the long crooked stream
till a meadow with grasses tall,
to a spot, now called South Center Mall,
which at the time that was so merry,
was occupied by the Golden Arrow Dairy.

NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day:

This composited series of images follows the Moon on January 10, the first Full Moon of 2020, in Hungarian skies. The lunar disk is in mid-eclipse at the center of the sequence though. It looks only slightly darker there as it passes through the light outer shadow or penumbra of planet Earth. In fact during this penumbral lunar eclipse the Moon almost crossed into the northern edge of Earth's dark central shadow or umbra. Subtle and hard to see, this penumbral lunar eclipse was the first of four lunar eclipses in 2020, all of which will be penumbral lunar eclipses.

Photo by Gyorgy Soponyai