12/15/2020

Dave Bonta December 15, 2020

Cold and quiet at sunrise. I walk to the ridgetop, clutching my thermos mug. Snow lingers in dips and hollows where the sun can’t reach.

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12/15/2020

April 20, 2023
Hen turkey calling at sunrise like a rusty machine pleading for oil, the tom interrupting with his usual non sequitur. A squirrel noses the stump…
12/15/2020

April 20, 2022
Birdcalls echo off an icy snowpack for maybe the last time this spring. Backlit by the sun, the lilac glows intensely green against the snow.
12/15/2020

April 20, 2021
The early miniature daffodils are mostly done, hanging limp as burst balloons. Two chipping sparrows hop among them, pecking at the dirt.
12/15/2020

April 20, 2020
Sun through thin cloud. A crow chases a raven through the treetops, dive-bombing it again and again. The raven’s furious croaks.
12/15/2020

April 20, 2019
Low clouds of variable darkness. A turkey vulture flaps its wings, struggling to get aloft. The weather app says it will rain in 37 minutes.
12/15/2020

April 20, 2018
Bright sun, icy breeze. Between creaks of a tree, a turkey’s gobble: like the engine turning over in a clown car. Daffodils bob and sway.
12/15/2020

April 20, 2017
‪The rhyming couplets of a brown thrasher. A blue-headed vireo’s dreamy soliloquy. When the sun comes out, raindrops glisten on every twig.‬
12/15/2020

April 20, 2016
A gnatcatcher crosses the yard. Its flight as erratic as a butterfly’s is punctuated by the briefest of pauses to ingest its eponymous prey.
12/15/2020

April 20, 2015
A dull-gray morning full of the rattling of woodpeckers. A bluebird lands on a branch in the yard like an emissary from the weekend.
12/15/2020

April 20, 2014
A Chinook helicopter flies low over the trees, with its twin rotors like a pair of malignant insects mating in flight, gravid with soldiers.

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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

12/15/2020