The Morning Porch

March 19, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Dark rain clouds without much rain in them. The pure notes of tundra swans drift down from the immaculate tundra of the upper air.

August 4, 2025
Clear, cold and still. I can’t stop gazing at the red oak seedling I found in the yard yesterday and immediately caged in a ring of deer fencing, its four jaunty leaves above a sea of invasive periwinkle.
August 4, 2024
Partly cloudy and cool at sunrise, with 97% humidity and very little noise from—I’m guessing—valleys full of fog. A single-engine plane fades into the distance.
August 4, 2023
Cool, humid and overcast. A pair of hummingbirds sit side by side on a bare twig, the male rising and hovering behind the female every few seconds to copulate with a decorousness one might not have expected from such fierce birds.
August 4, 2022
Cool beginning to another scorcher. A fly goes for a walk down a porch column. The thud of a walnut on the road.
August 4, 2021
Cool and overcast. Goldfinches chitter over the chirr of tree crickets. For ten seconds, two hummingbirds share the bergamot.