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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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Month: December 2009

December 3, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Trees rock and sway. The dead elm has parted with its largest limb, and the oblong scar glows a creamy yellow, like a well-aged cheese.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags elm, wind
December 2, 2009 by Dave Bonta

Cold, gray morning. I inventory the remaining spots of green: moss, grass, mountain laurel, pine, a rosette of thistle outlined in frost.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags bull thistle, mountain laurel
December 1, 2009 by Dave Bonta

A small band of clear sky in the west, persisting for over an hour, gives the woods and meadow a feverish glow. The sound of the wind.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow 2 Comments
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On This Day

  • February 4, 2025
    A gray sunrise, signalled only by the yelling of crows. After yesterday’s warmth, the ground is more brown than white. The wind picks up, clattering…
  • February 4, 2024
    A song sparrow singing at first light as if it were March already. A quiet trickle from the spring. The moon gapes through the treetops,…
  • February 4, 2023
    -14C at dawn and very still. A sound like a rifle shot as some tree’s heartwood splits open. Two distant bugle notes from a Canada…
  • February 4, 2022
    Dawn, and all the stream’s voices are raised. A squirrel finds a black walnut sticking out of a snowbank and races off with it.
  • February 4, 2021
    A crow mob on the move—their angry cries. Sun stripes the snow. I hold my head still to watch the slowly shifting points of glitter.

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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