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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

The Morning Porch
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November 15, 2009 by Dave Bonta

After last night’s rain, everything glistens but the four gray forms of deer beneath the lilac, their thin clouds of breath.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags deer, lilac
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On This Day

  • September 7, 2025
    Partly cloudy and cool at sunrise, with more yellow and orange leaves than I’ve ever seen this early in the fall: not just walnut and black gum but black birch, tulip poplar, and even a few maples, just as our 30 acres of goldenrod approach their peak of bloom. I’m…
  • September 7, 2024
    A soft, steady rain at dawn. At sunrise, a hummingbird buzzes in to sip from the jewelweeds under the porch roof dripline.
  • September 7, 2023
    Just at the point where the half-moon loses its share of the shadows, a migrant thrush calls from the woods’ edge: a few soft notes, then silence. The sky turns pink.
  • September 7, 2022
    Half an hour before sunrise, the first migrant wood thrush arrives at the woods’ edge, calling softly. A sneeze gathers in my sinuses.
  • September 7, 2021
    Sunlight leaks down from the treetops. A blue jay’s brassy call. Then the silence resumes where it left off.

See all...

Related book

Cover of Ice Mountain with a linocut of a big ridgetop tree.

What I do after I sit on the porch. One winter and spring's daily walks distilled into short poems with linocut illustrations by Beth Adams.

Header image: detail from Paper Garden by Clive Hicks-Jenkins (used by permission)

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