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The Morning Porch

Daily short takes from an Appalachian hollow

The Morning Porch
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May 22, 2023 by Dave Bonta

A few minutes past sunrise, from the still-deep shadows under the trees, the song of a vagrant Swainson’s thrush, hoarse but ethereal, rising in pitch like a rhetorical question.

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Categories Plummer's Hollow Tags Swainson’s thrush
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On This Day

  • May 29, 2025
    The rain has stopped, but everything drips. In the splay of dying daffodil leaves below the porch, glowing white dewberry blossoms.
  • May 29, 2024
    High drama in the trees behind the springhouse, where a red squirrel contends with the local grays. A jet with no contrail slips like a needle through the blue, its roar trailing far behind.
  • May 29, 2023
    Memorial Day. The dame’s-rocket lining the driveway is at its height of purple. A hen turkey at the woods’ edge clucks and calls. Summer’s here.
  • May 29, 2022
    A planetary conjunction slowly infiltrated by cirrus stained the color of dawn. A barred owl calls and a wild turkey answers.
  • May 29, 2021
    Mid-morning, and the rain has dwindled into cold mizzle. In the marsh at the bottom of the meadow, the spring peepers start back up.

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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