The Morning Porch

April 15, 2013March 7, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A warm morning—53°F. A Cooper’s hawk calls, a screech owl trills, but the squirrels go on rummaging through the leaf litter. I spy a gnat.

October 8, 2025
Early-morning rain past, a chill breeze stirs in the tulip poplar beside the springhouse, four-lobed leaves waving like jazz hands on a thousand-armed bodhisattva, some green, some yellow.
October 8, 2024
Clear and cold. The red squirrel I’ve been hearing scold finally appears, racing up a bare walnut tree just as a deer hunter drags the first kill of the season out of the woods.
October 8, 2023
Windy and cold. In the wall of leaves at the woods’ edge, the first few fragments of what will be my winter sky.
October 8, 2022
Cold, clear, and quiet. The wind has almost died. Through yellow leaves, just a bit more sky.
October 8, 2021
Fog at sunrise. A doe leads her two grown fawns to the wild apple tree—an exuberant clatter of hooves.