January 2009 – The Morning Porch

January 31, 2009 by Dave Bonta

I can hear my mother yelling at the squirrels: Go! Go! Go! It occurs to me that snow is the opposite of water, slippery when dry.

January 30, 2009 by Dave Bonta

In the pre-dawn darkness, the wall of trees is in motion, like a silent waterfall. I’m either having an acid flashback, or it’s snowing.

January 29, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A dozen doves take flight all at once—a confusion of flutes. From the almost-finished house a quarter mile away, the scream of a power saw.

January 28, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Like sand in an hourglass this pellet snow. Three craters in the yard—grass, leaves—from something that’s trying to turn back the clock.

January 27, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The promised snowstorm has yet to arrive. The air is dead still, and an hour after daybreak, the ground remains lighter than the sky.

January 26, 2009 by Dave Bonta

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 25, 2009 by Dave Bonta

The sun glimmers from a shrinking patch of open sky along the horizon. Lake-bottom wrecks, in another minute the icy lid will cover us all.

January 24, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Treetops sway wildly at first light, squeaking and clattering. A rabbit zigzags across the yard, pausing at each dark patch of bare ground.

January 23, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A few hours above freezing yesterday, and the snowpack lost its ability to absorb sound. I sit in the dark listening to the roar of trucks.

January 22, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Fingers of sunlight stretch across the yard. The resident naturalist climbs the trail into the woods with the aid of a long thin stick.

January 21, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A gray squirrel sits motionless for several minutes on the topmost crook of a fallen limb. Then like a diver it plunges into the snow.

January 20, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Clear and cold at dawn, with a crescent moon tangled in the treetops. A tiny white prayer flag flutters from a branch: some vacant cocoon.

January 19, 2009 by Dave Bonta

With each new snowfall the ground grows more uniform, our footprints grow harder to read, and cries die quickly, as in a soundproofed room.

January 18, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A titmouse lands on a snowy branch and puffs out the white down on its breast. From above the spring, a chickadee’s two-note song: hey ho.