2008 – Page 3 – The Morning Porch

December 3, 2008

Dave Bonta December 3, 2008

Out before dawn, I hear the crunch of boots up in the woods. It stops. All over the mountain, hunters are sitting silently in the trees.

Dave Bonta December 2, 2008

It doesn’t take a hard wind to get the trees talking, merely the right wind. A nuthatch’s nasal commentary. The whistling of doves’ wings.

Dave Bonta December 1, 2008

A half-hour before dawn, the stars begin to lose their luster—always a more melancholy thing than a sunset to me. The wind picks up.

Dave Bonta November 30, 2008

A slate-gray sky. From the birdfeeder up at my parents’ house, the sound of squabbling crowds, pushy as bargain shoppers ahead of the sleet.

Dave Bonta November 29, 2008

The snow gives them away—a crunch of footsteps, the unambiguous shapes: five turkeys 150 feet away, going single-file through the laurel.

Dave Bonta November 28, 2008

An hour before dawn, a deer-shaped shadow drifts out of the woods, apparitional against the snow, like the photographic negative of a ghost.

Dave Bonta November 27, 2008 1

That drum so low it sounds as if it’s in your head? A ruffed grouse, beating the air with its wings like one hand clapping. Or so they say.

Dave Bonta November 26, 2008

Enough snow now to make the ground a blank page for the calligraphy of weeds and the meandering tracks of birds, the prints of their wings.

Dave Bonta November 25, 2008

Two inches of fresh snow, and already the black cat is taking a shit in the middle of the driveway. Small pink clouds clutter up the sky.

Dave Bonta November 24, 2008

Mid-morning, and many of the feeder birds are sitting quietly in the treetops, silhouetted against the whitening sky. Bright smudge of sun.

Dave Bonta November 23, 2008

The moon inches upward through the trees with the earth’s glowing shadow between its horns. Two train whistles converge, one high, one low.

Dave Bonta November 22, 2008

Snowflakes in the air: the small, light variety that fall at ten degrees below freezing. They drift sideways, glistening in the sun.

Dave Bonta November 21, 2008

Another half-inch of snow on the ground, on the porch, on the horizontal limbs at the forest edge: pale arms outstreched in the darkness.

Dave Bonta November 20, 2008

Cold, gray, and windy, with a new half-inch of snow. The only flicker of warmth is a chickadee’s call—the pilot light in a stone-cold oven.