2010 – The Morning Porch

Friday December 31, 2010

Dave Bonta December 31, 2010 8

From over the ridge, a patrolman’s amplified voice, his words unintelligible. A blue jay does his best impression of a red-tailed hawk.

Dave Bonta December 30, 2010 4

I stare bleary-eyed at a chickadee darting through the lilac, listen to dueting wrens. The sun, too, is blurred by a kind of mucous.

Dave Bonta December 29, 2010 4

Feathery contrails outline a wedge of blue. On a high branch, three mourning doves sit facing the sunrise. The middle one preens its wings.

Dave Bonta December 28, 2010 2

Frozen trees rasp in the wind. I think of a song I once heard about a dictator where the fiddler scraped the strings with his fingernails.

Dave Bonta December 27, 2010 2

Between gusts of wind, the burble of a Carolina wren. Two ravens veer low over the trees, croaking, pursued by a pair of crows.

Dave Bonta December 26, 2010 1

So quiet, the downy woodpecker tapping a dead branch sounds as loud as a pile driver. High overhead, the half moon like a big right ear.

Dave Bonta December 25, 2010 4

A few flakes in the air. A gray squirrel wanders through the lilac branches, scattering a pair of juncos. The squeaky calls of finches.

Dave Bonta December 24, 2010 4

Before dawn, nothing but wind and trains. In the crown of a birch, Venus burns so fiercely, even the fast-moving clouds can’t extinguish it.

Dave Bonta December 23, 2010 2

Geese go over in a mob, flying this way and that. A flock of juncos at the woods’ edge rises and falls to the rhythm of its own wind.

Dave Bonta December 22, 2010 6

A dark morning, with grim news awaiting me in my email. A fox squirrel crosses the snowy yard, the mellow flame of its tail floating behind.