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The Morning Porch/Patio

The view from my front porch (in Pennsylvania) or back patio (in London) every morning, in tweet-sized bites

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Monday January 25, 2021

Dave Bonta January 25, 2021 0

Leaden sky. The hollow echoes with the drumming of pileated woodpeckers. Two soon stop, but the one with the most resonant tree bangs on.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged clouds, pileated woodpecker

Sunday January 24, 2021

Dave Bonta January 24, 2021 0

Cold (-10°C) and quiet, save for my mother’s periodic hollering at the squirrels on their back porch. My clouds of breath rise straight up.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged cold, gray squirrel

Saturday January 23, 2021

Dave Bonta January 23, 2021 0

The one-time slush pile in the yard looks hard as a wind-dried bone. The tall pines sigh in their sleep. I begin to lose feeling in my toes.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged cold, snow, white pines, wind

Friday January 22, 2021

Dave Bonta January 22, 2021 0

Half an hour before sunrise, the first inquisitive chirps: mockingbird. A snow-free caesura in the road where the spring flows under it.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged mockingbird, road, snow

Thursday January 21, 2021

Dave Bonta January 21, 2021 2

The first stripe of sunlight to make it through the woods follows the 200-year-old colliers’ trail. In thin snow, the cuneiform of sparrows.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged snow, sunrise

Wednesday January 20, 2021

Dave Bonta January 20, 2021 1

Just after sunrise, the side of the ridge where fresh snow is sheltered from the wind turns pink, until the clouds close in with their flaming bellies.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged clouds, sunrise

Monday January 18, 2021

Dave Bonta January 18, 2021 0

A few minutes till sunrise; the wren sounds impatient. But the clouds are heavy—overflowing, in fact. It’s light enough now to see the flakes.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged Carolina wren, clouds, snow, sunrise

Sunday January 17, 2021

Dave Bonta January 17, 2021 1

Seven cardinals—three pairs and a lone male—take turns drinking from the stream, then perch in the lilac’s bare branches, four feet apart.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged cardinal, stream

Saturday January 16, 2021

Dave Bonta January 16, 2021 0

Rising late, I catch the last of some new-snow magic dripping from the eaves. Friends arrive bearing sauerkraut.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged snow

Friday January 15, 2021

Dave Bonta January 15, 2021 0

An unfeasibly large number of chickadees foraging along the woods’ edge, calling, singing, dangling from black birch twigs like mutant fruit.

Posted in Plummer's Hollow
Tagged black birch, chickadee

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On this date

    January 26, 2019

    From under the house, rabbit tracks encircling a half-eaten raspberry cane, raccoon tracks going straight to the stream—muddy on the return. …

    January 26, 2018

    As the sunlight advances, the frosted yard turns from glitter to glisten. The barn-red cardinal's inexplicably cheerful two-note tune. …

    January 26, 2017

    The last trace of snow has gone again. The sky is blank. What kind of January is this? Trees rock back and forth like traumatized refugees. …

    January 26, 2015

    The snowstorm slows down just after daybreak, as if drawing its breath. I hear my mother on her back porch yelling at the squirrels. …

    January 26, 2014

    The snow shovel lies supine, fresh snow in its scoop. Wind-blown icicle drips dot the squirrel and rabbit tracks with random punctuation. …

    January 26, 2013

    This morning's stillness is made of fresh snow, a distant jet, the quiet squeaks of a downy woodpecker and a dove's whistling wings. …

    January 26, 2012

    Fog at daybreak, and a thin coat of sleet like coarse sand. From up in the woods, the sudden squealing of a squirrel fighting off a suitor. …

    January 26, 2011

    A distant quarry truck's reverse beeper has gone bad, and trills just like a digital alarm clock. Dueling chickadees tumble through the air. …

    January 26, 2010

    The ground is white again, a half-inch-thick pelt that must've formed in the small hours. The water's monologue continues at a lower key. …

    January 26, 2009

    Silhouetted against the snow, not one but two rabbits! Winter says: where much is hidden, much is also revealed. Ask the great-horned owls. …

    January 26, 2008

    It's snowing: single flakes at first, then more and more clumps, some asymmetric enough to spin or spiral—tiny leaves from a vast tree. …

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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.

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