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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

The Morning Porch
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Month: October 2010

October 3, 2010 by Dave Bonta

At 42 degrees Fahrenheit, only one cricket calls from the vicinity of the springhouse, a low, hollow creaking like a prolonged death rattle.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags crickets
October 2, 2010 by Dave Bonta

The witch hazel in my garden is just coming into bloom, yellow tentacles uncurling, the bunched nuts like maledictions waiting to burst.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags garden, witch hazel
October 1, 2010 by Dave Bonta

Clear and windy. Twelve crows fly sideways in tight formation over the treetops, the still-green oak leaves gilded by the sun.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American crow, oaks
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On This Day

  • November 12, 2025
    Cold and gray, with the wind hissing through the last few oak leaves still on the trees. The male Carolina wren sleeps in past his mate, her ‘response’ preceding his call by nearly five minutes.
  • November 12, 2024
    An hour past sunrise, the sky is half blue. The two-year-old tulip tree inside its cage of fencing waves a last, yellow leaf.
  • November 12, 2023
    Sun through thin, high clouds—enough to make the last few scarlet oak crowns glow. An ambulance wails through the gap.
  • November 12, 2022
    A lull in the rains. The transition from a watercolor world to pencil-brown and charcoal-gray is nearly complete.
  • November 12, 2021
    Clouds scudding against clouds, and here and there faint suggestions of blue: a clearing wind, complete with the obligatory exultant raven.

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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