The Morning Porch

Dave Bonta April 7, 2012

A downy woodpecker has found a loud limb to hammer. When the din stops, he’s with a female. That brief cloacal kiss that passes for sex.

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November 23, 2023
Blue-gray layered with yellow-orange a half hour past sunrise. The creek is still singing about Tuesday’s rain, and the one oak at the woods’ edge…
November 23, 2022
I look up from my phone: another perfect day. Tree shadows on the snow stretch from the woods’ edge to the porch. Doves flutter up…
November 23, 2021
Clear and cold. Two nuthatches trade riffs at the edge of the woods. I watch the rising sun crest the ridge one blazing filament at…
November 23, 2020
Cold with a clearing wind. The now nearly leafless lilac fills with juncos and chickadees. Nuthatches on adjacent trees exchange notes.
November 23, 2019
Clouds slowly vanish in the blue—like my own puffs of breath, but slower. Chickadees; a nuthatch. The forest floor goes from glow to shine.