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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

The Morning Porch
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November 18, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A red-bellied woodpecker’s head going up and down at the top of a tall locust, squeaking like a red marker on the whiteboard sky.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags red-bellied woodpecker
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On This Day

  • March 30, 2025
    Daffodils are open under a gray-wool sky. A cowbird’s liquid note. Up by the garage, a towhee is calling.
  • March 30, 2024
    Red sunrise. To the south, the moon has gone flat on one side so it resembles a giant ear for the first crow to yell…
  • March 30, 2023
    Clear and cold. Frost glitters in the low-angled sun. The miniature daffodils are frozen in positions of prayer.
  • March 30, 2022
    Five degrees below freezing and heavily overcast. A thin, lispy note—some finch, I guess, high in the black locusts. The dry hiss of sleet.
  • March 30, 2021
    Crystal clear sky. Hundreds of daffodil buds look ready to open this afternoon. From up in the woods, a cry like a strangled crow.

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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