The Morning Porch » hunters

The clouds part just above the horizon...

Dave Bonta — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 13:03:23 +0000

The clouds part just above the horizon, where a weak sun glimmers like a bonfire among the skeletal trees. Distant shots ring out.

Dave Bonta — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 13:27:09 +0000

The boom of a rifle. A small hawk glides through the trees, lands between me and the faint yellow blotch of sun and waggles its tail.

Dave Bonta — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 13:58:24 +0000

Creak and rattle from the woods. A distant gunshot. Overhead, the shapely cumulus could almost be a summer sky, if it didn’t move so fast.

Dave Bonta — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 13:59:54 +0000

A blaze-orange hunting coat floats through the snowy woods, out-of-place as a sign in the desert: burning bush, billboard, neon whorehouse.

Dave Bonta — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:10:34 +0000

A cold, wet morning that must test the hunters’ mettle. Over the rain, the rattle of the window-tapping cardinal clashing with her nemesis.

Dave Bonta — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 13:55:00 +0000

Blue overhead, and the frost so heavy, it looks like a light snow. From the barnyard, the voices of hunters returning with their first kill.

Dave Bonta — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:05:08 +0000

The opening day of rifle season. Deer run back and forth through the laurel—each shift of the wind must bring a different human’s stink.

Dave Bonta — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:08:20 +0000

The still, gray morning is interrupted by the stuttering roar of a pickup full of hunters hauling an enormous homemade wooden tree stand.

Dave Bonta — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:37:44 +0000

Halfway up the ridge, a flashlight bobs through the trees, stops, goes out. Then the rustling thuds of hooves in dry leaves. Then silence.