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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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Month: March 2009

March 17, 2009 by Dave Bonta

In the dim light of a misty morning, rain-slick surfaces glow: green lichens, purple raspberry canes, the yellow blades of foxtail millet.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black raspberry, foxtail millet, lichen
April 15, 2013March 16, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Flushed from hiding, the Cooper’s hawk easily eludes the crow, skimming the treetops like a wide-fletched arrow still attached to the bow.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Cooper's hawk, hawks
March 15, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Joining the robins, titmice and song sparrow in the dawn chorus: a barred owl. The deer grazing in the yard look up, swiveling their ears.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American robin, deer, tufted titmouse
March 14, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Thin clouds at mid-morning. Four nuthatches in the treetops are all raising the same argument, the sun a yellow limit point in their midst.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags white-breasted nuthatch
March 13, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Clear and cold at sunrise. The feral cat slinks across the springhouse meadow. Muffled sounds of a squirrel scolding from inside its drey.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cats, gray squirrel, springhouse, sunrise
March 12, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Back below freezing. The word breeze no longer fits the low winds, full of bite and lightly salted with snow.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags porcupine
March 11, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Wet with a clearing wind at daybreak, and the yard rings with robin calls. I hear a loud rummaging in the nest up under the eaves.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American robin
March 10, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Two crows locate a small gray hawk in a maze of gray branches. But their angry calls soon taper off, and they sit silently under a gray sky.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
March 9, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A rapid whistling of wings: a woodcock hurtles through the yard at eye-level. Thank you, Congress, for giving back our slow, dark mornings.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
March 8, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The distant drumming of a pileated woodpecker is the loudest thing. A faint rustle in the field, the yard, the woods as the rain moves in.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags pileated woodpecker
April 15, 2013March 7, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A warm morning—53°F. A Cooper’s hawk calls, a screech owl trills, but the squirrels go on rummaging through the leaf litter. I spy a gnat.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Cooper's hawk, gray squirrel, hawks, screech owl, sunrise
March 6, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A long dark streak on the red maple beside the road: sap is rising. A crow at the top of the tallest pine hunkers down to deliver every caw.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow
March 5, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A downy woodpecker plays a dead locust limb like a marimba, moving rapidly from pitch to pitch, a tremor of red against the blue sky.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags downy woodpecker
March 4, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Right after a mourning dove’s song, a screech owl trills at the very same pitch. The sun floats free of the horizon and into the bluest sky.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags fog, mourning doves, screech owl
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On This Day

  • June 9, 2025
    Occasional glimpses of sun. The first periodical cicadas began singing at sunrise, and by midmorning it’s a kind of high, ceaseless static—as if they’re relaying transmissions from the cosmos.
  • June 9, 2025
    Occasional glimpses of sun. The first periodical cicadas began singing at sunrise, and by midmorning it’s a kind of high, ceaseless static—as if they’re relaying transmissions from the cosmos.
  • June 9, 2024
    Breezy and cool. The briefest of showers comes tapping on the roof. A tall dame’s rocket sways in front of the porch, all its flowers converted into needle-thin pods.
  • June 9, 2023
    A slight sheen on the leaves at sunrise—what passes for rain these days must’ve fallen. The faintest smell of soil. An ovenbird’s endless lesson.
  • June 9, 2022
    Just past sunrise, a clearing wind. I look up from the Eastern Europe of my book to flame-bellied clouds, the forest all astir.

See all...

Related book

Cover of Ice Mountain with a linocut of a big ridgetop tree.

What I do after I sit on the porch. One winter and spring's daily walks distilled into short poems with linocut illustrations by Beth Adams.

Header image: detail from Paper Garden by Clive Hicks-Jenkins (used by permission)

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