The Morning Porch

October 26, 2020 by Dave Bonta

Rainy and cold. The distant firing of a semi-automatic rifle, muffled by valley fog, sounds like nothing so much as a crepitating fart.

November 7, 2025
Cold and still. The sun is a bright smudge slowly shrinking into a blaze as the clouds thin out. A train horn blows an almost perfect minor chord.
November 7, 2024
Warm and breezy with bright holes in the clouds. The sprawling old lilac is well into its second spring, with a new crop of bright green leaves at all stages of development, from tiny to full-sized.
November 7, 2023
Breezy and warm. With each gust of wind, a flotilla of leaves sets sail from the big tulip tree, as the sun ascends a ladder of clouds.
November 7, 2022
Clear and cooler. A female cardinal flies out of a barberry bush, her bill red as the berries. Crows argue over fresh additions to the compost.
November 7, 2021
A scrap of hornets’ gray paper by my chair. Sunlight catches a dead dame’s-rocket below the porch, seed pods reduced to pure gesture.