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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

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Month: March 2021

March 31, 2021 by Dave Bonta

The sort of rain that makes the world puddle-wonderful. Around the broken old dog statue, the daffodils have drawn their yellow hoop.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags daffodils, dog statue, rain
March 30, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Crystal clear sky. Hundreds of daffodil buds look ready to open this afternoon. From up in the woods, a cry like a strangled crow.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags daffodils
March 29, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Cold and blustery. The kak-kak-kak of a Cooper’s hawk, who comes rocketing out of the woods a second later with a redtail in pursuit.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Cooper's hawk, red-tailed hawk
March 28, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Rain and the first daffodils: April has come early. Fog appears and disappears among the trees. The robin unspools a silver thread of song.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American robin, daffodils, fog, rain
March 27, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Sun climbing every tree at once. A hollow snag mutters like a stomach with its cargo of squirrels.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags gray squirrel, sunrise
March 26, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Sunny and warm with high winds, as if March’s proverbial lion and lamb were the same. Trees sway drunkenly. Their dead shed leaves rise up.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags wind
March 25, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Overcast and damp, with woodpecker rattle and squirrel-claw clatter and an exuberant robin duetting with his echo.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags American robin, gray squirrel, pileated woodpecker 1 Comment
March 24, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Dawn. A phoebe and a cardinal are singing in the rain. At the woods’ edge, the last patch of snow has shrunk to the size of a hubcap.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags cardinal, dawn, phoebe, rain, snow
March 23, 2021 by Dave Bonta

The last patch of snow is sinking into the earth. A titmouse flits from branch to branch up a walnut sapling, whistling softly to himself.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags black walnut, snow, tufted titmouse
March 22, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Sunrise. I watch the trees grow shadows and pelts of sunlight. Anyone rooted can become a gnomon: from the Greek, an expert or interpreter.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags sunrise
March 21, 2021 by Dave Bonta

A few degrees above freezing on a day forecast to be warm, and the air is already busy with flying things: insects, milkweed down, a phoebe.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags milkweed, phoebe
September 8, 2026March 20, 2021 by Dave Bonta

Equinox. A cowbird’s liquid note. My breath glows in the sunlight as if from the lungs of some gold buddha.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags equinox
March 19, 2021 by Dave Bonta

A ray of sun strikes the lilac, setting its yellow buds aglow. The sound of water gurgling under my yard. The back-and-forth of nuthatches.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags lilac, stream, sunrise, white-breasted nuthatch
March 18, 2021 by Dave Bonta

A dark morning; the ridges disappear into fog. A Carolina wren’s call is barely audible over the rain’s deafening hush.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Carolina wren, fog, rain
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On This Day

  • September 21, 2025
    Heavily overcast: a rain sky with no rain. Up in the woods, a Cooper’s hawk begins to chirp, answered seconds later by a red-tailed hawk. The two hawks exchange calls for several minutes before falling silent and letting the jays take over.
  • September 21, 2024
    Jays, then crows, then jays again: my kind of singers, harsh as life itself or hoarse with joy. The sun glimmers through high, thin clouds.
  • September 21, 2023
    Dawn: the red thread of a contrail fraying as it fades. Fog rises from the goldenrod, erasing the faint dot that must’ve been Mercury.
  • September 21, 2022
    Dawn comes with an inversion layer, traffic noise half-smothering the scattered notes of thrushes fresh from their night flights.
  • September 21, 2021
    Under a thinning white sky, the thinning crown of a black cherry tree already less green than salmon. The sunflowers face every direction.

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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