The Morning Porch

July 4, 2008 by Dave Bonta

I feel a ground beetle walking up my leg, under my jeans. How do I know it isn’t an ant or a cockroach? The feet make a solid connection.

October 1, 2025
A cold front has delivered October’s bright blue weather right on schedule. Yellow leaves flutter down in the breeze. A Carolina wren draws again and again from a seemingly inexhaustible well of song.
October 1, 2024
The rain slackens toward mid-morning and I can hear chirps and twitters: warblers in their muted autumn colors foraging for breakfast in the treetops.
October 1, 2023
A moon gone slightly flat hangs in the big walnut trees over my mother’s house, which periodically release their ordnance onto the roof with a bang.
October 1, 2022
A mid-morning break in the rain. The sun almost comes out. From up in the woods, the shrill panic of a squirrel just missed by a hawk.
October 1, 2021
Cold and clear. Stars fade as the ground fog grows, partly lit by the crescent moon, partly by the dawn.